A Walk Thru Paris

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Around Town - Part II

A few more photos taken while we were just walking around Paris.

Monday, May 16, 2011

Monet at the Musée de l’Orangerie

As best I understand it, the Musee de l’Orangerie was built in Paris, very near the Louvre, with the idea of displaying some of Claude Monet’s very large paintings from his Nympheas (water-lily) series. This series of paintings (about 250 in total) were all painted in his flower garden in Giverny, France. Not all these paintings are displayed here, they can be found in museums around the world, but there are quite a few here, as well as other of Monet’s work on display here, plus works from other impressionist and post-impressionists such as Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Alfred Sisley. The first three paitings shown are from the Nympheas series. The last painting, of the boats, is titled Argenteuil. and is one of my favorite Monet's. It was painted in 1875 when Monet lived in the village of Argenteuil, along the Seine River, just outside of Paris.

Argenteuil
By Claude Monet, 1875

Friday, May 13, 2011

Musée du Louvre

The Louvre Museum is undoubtedly one of the world’s most renowned museums. A former palace that sits on the site of a 12^th century fortress (you can still see some of the earliest foundations down in the basement) it was first decreed to be a museum during the French Revolution. The museum first opened in 1793, on the first anniversary of King Louis XVI’s demise, and except for a couple of short periods of time along the way, notably World War I and II, it has been open to the public ever since!

The place is simply magnificent, and gigantic! It is home to the Mona Lisa, and more than 6,000 other paintings, hundreds of sculptures (including the Venus de Milo), and close to 50,000 drawings, prints, and illustrated books! This is not the type of place where you are going to see it all on a Sunday afternoon!

Because the Louvre houses so many famous pieces of art, you can imagine that it is a very popular place to visit. We were blessed to avoid the crowds (for the most part) due to the time of year we were in Paris, but in the summer time, lines can be long!

This section of the blog is broken up into three different parts – pictures of the outside of the Louvre, the artwork inside the Louvre, and the ceilings of the Louvre (that’s right, the ceilings!) While photography is allowed inside the Louvre, you cannot use a flash, or put your camera on a tripod. Therefore a few of the photos may be slightly dark, or slightly blurry. Overall however, you should be able to get a pretty good “picture” of one of the world’s most famous museums! To enlarge any of the thumbnails, simply double-click it!

The third photograph in this section is a picture of the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, a monument built to commemorate the military victories of Napoleon. It sits in front on the Louvre, on the east end of the Champs-Élysées, and is essentially a smaller version of the Arc de Triomphe de l’Etoile which sits on the other end of the Champs-Élysées.

Because of the number of pictures in these posts, you may need to click on the the link that reads Older Posts at the bottom-right of the post, to see the pictures of the ceilings.

Squint your eyes and you can almost imagine life at the palace in the early 1700's.

Looking out, from inside the infamous glass pyramid.

The Artwork of the Louvre

The old saying goes that a picture is worth a 1000 words. That could not be any more true than in the Louvre! Where I could, I have included the name of the work and the artist. Also, because some of these paintings are so large, I've included the size of the painting so you can better understand the scope of it.