Tag: Paris

Musée d’Orsay – The Building

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Musée d’Orsay is housed in Gare d’Orsay, an old train station (and hotel) that served as the terminus for the Paris-Orleans Railway.  Gare d’Orsay was the first electrified rail terminal in the world and opened just in time for the 1900 World Fair (Exposition Universelle).  By 1939 the station’s platforms were too short to accommodate the the longer trains now used for long-distance travel; however, it was still used for some suburban trains.  The hotel closed in 1973; the building was reopened in December 1986 as a museum, Musée d’Orsay.  The building is beautiful, and after learning it’s story, I’m so happy that the French government decided to give it new life.

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Musée d’Orsay – Van Gogh Collection

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Musee d'Orsay

I’ve loved Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings since I was in elementary school.  My elementary school P.E. coach, Georgia Moore, was passionate about art and literature, and all of her students benefited from her knowledge.  I have vivid memories of our Friday Humanities classes (Humanities replaced P.E. on Fridays).  I remember learning about Shakespeare, Matisse, and Van Gogh.  I remember going home and telling my parents about The Starry Night — they bought me a framed copy of it shortly there after for getting all As on my report card.  In addition to The Starry Night, I specifically remember learning about his sunflower paintings, Bedroom in Arles, and Self Portrait with Pipe and Straw Hat.  At the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam I learned that he painted so many self-portraits because he wanted to practice painting people but couldn’t afford to pay people to model for him.  His work didn’t become highly regarded until after his death.

I had never heard of Paris’ Musée d’Orsay, but upon finding out about their many Van Gogh paintings, I know that the Musée d’Orsay had to be part of our itinerary.  We visited Musée d’Orsay on our second day in Paris, and the museum, as a whole, was fantastic.  We got there right when the museum opened, so it wasn’t very crowded.  I relished being able to examine the Van Goghs in near-solitude (much unlike when I saw The Starry Night at The Museum of Modern Art in New York City).

The photographs in this post were all taken at Musée d’Orsay.  Someday I’ll have to write additional blog posts about the other Van Gogh paintings I’ve had the opportunity to see.

This self-portrait (below) is suspected to be Van Gogh’s last self-portrait.  He painted it during September 1889 and gave it to his beloved brother, Theo.  He died on July 29, 1890.


Self Portrait
September 1889

Bedroom in Arles [third version]
September 1889


Portrait of Dr. Gachet [second version]
1890

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The Louvre – Egyptian Antiquities

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We spent a small amount of our time at The Louvre looking at the Egyptian antiquities collection.  I suspect that we would have spent more time in that area of the museum had we not spent so much time in the Egyptian antiquities section at the The Metropolitan Museum of Art just five months earlier.  I find objects from Egypt fascinating and wanted to share the a few of my favorite photos from The Louvre’s collection of Egyptian antiquities.


Statue du dieu Horus


Statue du dieu Horus

The Seated Scribe (bel0w) has intrigued museum-goers for years. It was carved from white limestone, and its colors have been fairly well-preserved given the age of the statue.  This video provides interesting commentary on the statue.


The Seated Scribe
2600 – 2350 B.C.


Grand Sphinx

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The Louvre Palace

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While most posts about The Louvre are probably about the art (like my Mona Lisa post and Sculptures & Statues post), I decided that The Louvre Palace is pretty enough to deserve its very own post.  The Louvre Museum is housed in The Louvre Palace.  The palace is 652,300 square feet and holds nearly 35,000 artifacts.  The museum is the most visited museum in the world.

Construction of The Louvre Palace began in 1202, though it was renovated throughout the years, including the controversial addition if the infamous pyramid (completed in 1989).  How the Louvre was named is unclear, though some think it is a form of “leouar,” a Latin-Saxon word for castle.  The Louvre served as the seat of power in France until Louis XIV moved to Versailles.  It continued to be used as a formal seat of government until 1789, at which point it became a museum.  Following the 1870 renovation, Napoleon Bonaparte III became the first ruler to live in The Louvre since Louis XIV.  You can visit Napoleon’s apartments at The Louvre.

Looking back, I wish I had taken more photographs of the buildings, but it was hard to remember to pay attention to the building when you’re surrounded by so many beautiful works of art.  In addition to the photographs in this post, I also took some nighttime photographs of The Louvre.

We ate lunch on a terrace overlooking the area enclosed by The Louvre Palace.  It definitely offered a neat perspective of the buildings, and I enjoyed getting to see the statues up close.

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Mona Lisa

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It just didn’t seem right to write a blog post about The Louvre without mentioning the Mona Lisa, so I decided that this painting needed its very own post.

We arrived at The Louvre just after it opened and made a beeline to the Mona Lisa.  The museum gets more crowded throughout the day, and the Mona Lisa is the main-attraction, so we wanted to go ahead and get that out of the way.  Given how crowded the Mona Lisa Room was when we arrived, I’m glad that we didn’t wait until later in the day to see it.

Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa between 1503 and 1506 (while living in Florence), though several people believe that he continued working on it as late as 1517 (while he lived in Ambois).  The Mona Lisa is an oil painting on a white, Lombardy poplar panel.  Though much mystery used to surround the painting, it seems to be fairly well accepted that the Mona Lisa is a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo, a member of the Florence & Tuscany-based Gherardini family.  Her husband was Francesco del Giocondo, a Florentine silk merchant.  The Mona Lisa is currently valued at $782 million USD.

Seeing the Mona Lisa without a huge crowd present just wasn’t a possibility, so I decided to embrace the craziness and tried to take pictures that captured the experience of seeing the Mona Lisa along with hundreds of other tourists.

When you enter the Mona Lisa Room, this is what you see.  There are several other paintings in the room, but we didn’t take time to see them because there were too many people in this room for our liking.

After you wade through some of the people, you’re able to get a glimpse of the Mona Lisa.  I thought that this photograph of someone taking a picture of the Mona Lisa with an iPhone would be a fun picture to look back on in 30 – 50 years (will iPhones still be around then?)!

A few people, like me, still use stand-alone cameras to take pictures.  Notice the lady on the right-side of the photo taking a selfie with the Mona Lisa.  I’m always amazed at the amount of people taking selfies with artwork.  To each, his (or her) own.

I tried to be polite and spent several minutes waiting for a clear path to the front of the group of people staring at the Mona Lisa, but it became evident that manners weren’t going to get me very far.  Sooooo…I gave up and started acting like everyone else and pushed my way to the front so that I could get an unobstructed photograph.  They don’t let you anywhere close to the painting, so this was the best I could get.

Mona Lisa
by Leonardo da Vinci
1503 – 1506, oil on white poplar panel

After I managed to get out-of and away-from the crowd, I snapped this photo of people viewing the Mona Lisa.  Not exactly the calm, serene, life-altering experience one would hope for while viewing the most popular painting in the world.

The painting across from the Mona Lisa is The Wedding at Cana (1563) by Paolo Veronese.  It is the biggest painting in The Louvre.  This painting depicts the New Testament wedding during which Jesus performed His first miracle by turning water to wine.  The painting hung in the refectory of a Benedictine monastery in Venice for 253 years at which point it was stolen by Napoleon (in 1797) and shipped to Paris.  The painting measures 21.8 ft by 32.5 ft.

I took one last shot of the crowd and the Mona Lisa before we (gladly) vacated the Mona Lisa Room.

The Louvre – Sculptures & Statues

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9qeem53

I’ve been debating whether or not to write a post about our visit to The Louvre.  I have to admit, I’m struggling with whether or not a post consisting solely of photographs of artwork will be interesting.  In the end, I decided to start off with photographs of statues.  Statues seem to photograph better than paintings…maybe because they’re three dimensional…or maybe because I have a soft spot for statues.  How sculptors can take something rock-solid and turn it into something that looks flowing and full of life is beyond me.

The Louvre is HUGE, and I’m honestly not sure how many hours we spent there.  We purchased our tickets ahead of time, which allowed us to wait in a shorter line than the normal line.  We had a general game plan as far as the things that we knew we had to see — The Mona Lisa, Winged Victory, and Venus de Milo.  It was a rather short list because I’m not terribly familiar with artwork from the time period featured at The Louvre.  I read several different “10 Things You Must See at The Louvre” articles before our trip, and most of the items in those lists didn’t really interest me.

I’m fairly detail-oriented, so in addition to taking photographs that show entire statues, I also like to take up-close photographs of certain portions/parts of the statue that caught my attention.  I think this love of and appreciation for detail is part of what fuels my interest in statues.  The building that houses The Louvre is visible in the background of several of photographs in this post — be sure to take in the beauty of the building itself!

Disclaimer: Nearly all of the information placards accompanying art on display in The Louvre are entirely in French.  I did my best to correctly identify the titles, authors, materials, and time period of each of the statues showcased in this post.

Here is a link to an Imgur photo album containing all of the photos in this post.

Winged Victory of Samothrace
by Pythokritos of Lindos
2nd Century B.C., marble

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Diana of Versailles
Bronze

Venus de Milo
by Alexandros of Antioch
Between 130 & 100 B.C., marble

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Jardin des Plantes

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After leaving Luxembourg Gardens, we walked 1.4 miles to the Jardin des Plantes.  The Jardin des Plantes is a large botanical garden located just to the east of the Seine in the 5th arrondissement of Paris.  It covers 69.2 acres and was the first botanical garden to be created in Paris.  Though it was founded in 1626, it did not open to the public until 1640.  It was originally planted by Louis XIII’s physician, Doctor Guy de la Brosse as a medicinal herb garden.

I am currently reading All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, and I’ve enjoyed the many references to the Jardin des Plantes.  I can picture Marie-Laure and her father traipsing through the gardens on their way to the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of locks.  If you, too, are reading this wonderful book, I hope that my photographs will help bring the Jardin des Plantes to life for you.

There were many plants that I had never seen before, and I didn’t do a very good job of taking photographs of all of the name placards (shame on me), so there won’t be much information to share in the post — only pictures of pretty flowers.

Here’s a link to the Imgur photo album containing the photographs in this post.

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Russell Hybrid Lupines

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Walking The Streets of Paris

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When Bryan and I visit foreign countries, we tend to do a lot of walking.  If our destination is within three miles or so of our starting point, we’ll choose to walk over taking public transportation because when you walk you get to see things (metros don’t tend to be all that scenic)…time spent walking is never wasted, it is invested.

We thoroughly enjoyed walking around Paris during May.  The weather was pleasant, everyone was happy, flowers were blooming in window-boxes, and signs of life were everywhere.  I don’t really know the exact locations of most of these photographs, so this post won’t contain much writing.  Even still, I wanted to share these pictures with you because the streets are what made me fall in love with Paris.

“Not all those who wander are lost.”
-J.R.R. Tolkien

Here’s a link to the Imgur photo album containing the images in this post.

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Rue Cler Neighborhood

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Sainte-Chapelle

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St. Chapelle Collage

Sainte-Chapelle (Holy Chapel) is a medieval Gothic chapel.  Its construction began after 1239, and it was consecrated in 1248.  France’s King Louis IX commissioned it so that he would have a place to store his collection of passion relics.  The cathedral was damaged during the French Revolution and restored during the 19th century.  The cathedral is said to be a prime example of Rayonnant Gothic architecture.  It has one of the best collections of 13th century stained glass in the world.

We purchased our tickets for Sainte-Chapelle ahead of time to decrease the amount of time that we spent waiting in line.  I got pretty good at navigating websites in French in order to purchase tickets in advance.  We attempted to visit the chapel on our first day in France; however, we were turned away and notified that the chapel was closed because they were in the process of removing tarps from some of the windows that had just finished being restored.  The man that we spoke with told us that we should come back the next day because the work would be finished — talk about good timing!  We went to Sainte-Chapelle on the same day that we visited Musee d’Orsay.  The stained glass was beautiful, and we were provided with a guide so we were able read about the Bible stories the stained glass is depicting — it was nice to actually know what we were looking at for a change.

If you’re planning on taking photographs in Sainte-Chapelle, you may want to consider going on a day when there is lots of sunshine in the forecast, as the chapel is dimly lit.  If you want to get good photographs of the outside of the chapel, consider bringing a fish-eye lens; there are other buildings in close proximity to the chapel that make it difficult to get good photographs without a wide-angle lens.  Sadly, I did not have my fish-eye lens with me at the time.

Here’s a link to the Imgur photo album containing the photos in this post.

b2wh4hpCreepy Gargoyle

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Jardin du Luxembourg

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France4Bryan and I had traveled to Europe twice before our trip to France, and both trips were during December.  I thoroughly enjoyed our December trips to Germany; however, it seemed to me that Paris would be perfect during spring, so we chose to visit France during May.

Prior to the trip, I researched parks and gardens in Paris and knew that I wanted to make time to visit Luxembourg Garden.  We went to Luxembourg Garden on our second day in Paris — the same day that we visited Musee d’Orsay and St. Chapelle.  Luxembourg Garden did not disappoint!  It was full of people, statues, flowers, and life!  We even got to watch a few rounds of pétanque (which I regret not taking any photos of), a game we read about before our trip.

Marie de’ Medici, a native of Florence and the wife of King Louis XIII, began creating Luxembourg Garden in 1612.  She wanted something to remind her of Florence.  Today the park is owned by the French Senate and occupies 60 acres.  It is home to 106 statues, of which I photographed a mere 17.  We spent a couple of hours at the park and didn’t even come close to seeing everything.

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Statue of Marie de’ Medici

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