Paris Interlude 2

Winter is a good time to visit museums in Paris: the queues are not so long and, once inside, you actually have space to view the works. Our first stop was the famous Musee d’Orsay on the Left Bank, home to the world’s largest collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art. The Musee itself is a former railway station, built in the Beaux Arts style for the grand Exposition Universelle in 1900. In its new incarnation, the ‘Md’O’ is a beautiful exhibition space filled with natural light. Every important name in French art of the 19^th and early 20^th Century is represented, including Manet’s two revolutionary works, “Dejeuner sur l’Herbe” and “Olympia”. Gazing at these and other so-familiar paintings, it’s a hard to imagine the passions they incited back in the day, not just for their subject matter, but for a style described as crude, slapdash, unfinished – impressionistic, in fact.

Renoir’s “Bal du Moulin de la Gallette” is here – and we’d had the chance to visit the setting of the painting the day before. Van Gogh’s ‘other’ Starry Night  “Over the Rhone” , Cezanne’s lovely small studies of fruit and flowers, Gaugin’s Polynesian paintings … My favourite moment: a little boy of about seven, comes to a dead stop in front of a glorious Monet waterlilies painting, stares at it for a couple of minutes and turns earnestly to his father, “C’est tres jolie, Papa!”

Some people say that the d’Orsay collection is a bit second rate, and I guess it’s true that the master works of the great Impressionists are elsewhere, but as a tour of an era, it is brilliant. It’s also doable: you can actually get around and enjoy the whole museum within the day without feeling exhausted and overwhelmed.

 

The previous day we had taken a long and fascinating walk up to Montmartre, the high point on the northern outskirts of old Paris that used to be a village of artisans, revolutionaries and bohemians. On the way we passed the once notorious Moulin Rouge, the Moulin de la Gallette, and the ‘man in the wall’ sculpture which commemorates writer Marcel Ayme and his story about a man who could walk through walls. Somehow, despite we tourists flocking to the area, Montmartre manages to retain something of that village feeling still, though I don’t think I’d like to be here at the height of summer. The shops are still small and unique, the old buildings beautiful and the restaurants serve hearty French food rather than generic takeaway. The lovely church of Sacre Coeur dominates from the top of the hill. Inside, I was fortunate enough to hear the choir of nuns singing for the Sunday mass – hauntingly beautiful voices filling the great vault, illuminated by hundreds of candles and soft light through the stained glass.

After some searching we found the Espace Dali, a collection of Dali’s works mainly comprising sculptures and preliminary drawings. Several were interesting, but overall there was a much greater sense of Dali the showman than Dali the artist. Lunch on a freezing cold day? What could be better than boeuf Bourguignon and authentic soupe a l’oignon?