The Value Of Art Is Not The Price-Melinda
Or is it just stopped up sinuses. Either way. Yucky. My bird drawing craze goes back at least six years or more. Some early ones. Parking lot seagulls probably in a Strathmore mixed media. I draw better birds now. All these were drawn while watching the birds. Chicken chasing Parrot rescue in Pigeon Forge Drawing […]
via Day 2095 Crud that keeps giving — Margaret McCarthy Hunt Art
If you love the Impressionist period art, the d’Orsay has the largest collection of masterpieces in the world. It’s a travelers delight. The architecture of the building, an old train station, is worth the trip alone. The Left Bank has a completely different vibe than the Right Bank. The crowd is younger, it’s more affordable and less Rodeo Drive. I stayed in a small family run hotel, quaint, friendly and close to many attractions. Just blocks from Norte Dame, now sadly what’s left of Notre Dame.
Melinda
The Musée d’Orsay (French pronunciation: [myze dɔʁsɛ]) is a museum in Paris, France, on the Left Bank of the Seine. It is housed in the former Gare d’Orsay, a Beaux-Arts railway station built between 1898 and 1900. The museum holds mainly French art dating from 1848 to 1914, including paintings, sculptures, furniture, and photography. It houses the largest collection of impressionist and post-Impressionist masterpieces in the world, by painters including Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Cézanne, Seurat, Sisley, Gauguin, and Van Gogh. Many of these works were held at the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume prior to the museum’s opening in 1986. It is one of the largest art museums in Europe. Musée d’Orsay had 3.177 million visitors in 2017.
The museum building was originally a railway station, Gare d’Orsay, constructed for the Chemin de Fer de Paris à Orléansand finished in time for the 1900 Exposition Universelle to the design of three architects: Lucien Magne, Émile Bénard and Victor Laloux. It was the terminus for the railways of southwestern France until 1939.
By 1939 the station’s short platforms had become unsuitable for the longer trains that had come to be used for mainline services. After 1939 it was used for suburban services and part of it became a mailing centre during World War II. It was then used as a set for several films, such as Kafka‘s The Trial adapted by Orson Welles, and as a haven for the Renaud–Barrault Theatre Company and for auctioneers, while the Hôtel Drouot was being rebuilt.
In 1970, permission was granted to demolish the station but Jacques Duhamel, Minister for Cultural Affairs, ruled against plans to build a new hotel in its stead. The station was put on the supplementary list of Historic Monuments and finally listed in 1978. The suggestion to turn the station into a museum came from the Directorate of the Museum of France. The idea was to build a museum that would bridge the gap between the Louvre and the National Museum of Modern Art at the Georges Pompidou Centre. The plan was accepted by Georges Pompidou and a study was commissioned in 1974. In 1978, a competition was organized to design the new museum. ACT Architecture, a team of three young architects (Pierre Colboc, Renaud Bardon and Jean-Paul Philippon), were awarded the contract which involved creating 20,000 square metres (220,000 sq ft) of new floorspace on four floors. The construction work was carried out by Bouygues.[4] In 1981, the Italian architect Gae Aulenti was chosen to design the interior including the internal arrangement, decoration, furniture and fittings of the museum. Finally in July 1986, the museum was ready to receive its exhibits. It took 6 months to install the 2000 or so paintings, 600 sculptures and other works. The museum officially opened in December 1986 by then-president François Mitterrand.
Van Goghs Blue church – Église Notre Dame de L’Assomption at Auvers-sur-Oise Getting near done. If you turn the corner to the left you will be at the Auberge Ravoux where he died. Maybe a block away. The lab was added because I knocked my metal Holbein palette from the table onto this painting after […]
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via Spotlight – Photography by Goff James — Art, Photography and Poetry
I love this face, be sure to check out all of her blog.
Dr. Elena Keidosiute is a cultural attache and postdoctoral fellow. She first studied in Lithuania and Great Britain, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at NYU about Jewish conversions to catholicism. In the meantime, she became a cultural attache for the Lithuanian Embassy in Tel Aviv and organized a music festival. She is Lithuanian & European.
A short train ride outside of Paris you will find The Palace Versailles Chateau Rive Gauche. This is a must see, the experience is like no other. The museum compares to the top museums in Paris. The gardens are magnificent and perfectly manicured, beautiful waterfall statues are strategically placed. This is before you enter The Palace. Enjoy! Melinda
The Palace of Versailles, whose origins date back to the seventeenth century, was successively a hunting lodge, a seat of power and , from the nineteenth century , a museum. With the gardens and the Palaces of Trianon, the park of the Château de Versailles spreads over 800 hectares.
« It’s not a palace, it’s an entire city. Superb in its size, superb in its matter.»
With 60,000 artworks, collections of Versailles illustrate 5 centuries of French History. This set reflects the dual vocation of the Palace once inhabited by the sovereigns and then a museum dedicated “to all the glories of France” inaugurated by Louis-Philippe in 1837.
Water features of all kinds are an important part of French gardens, even more so than plant designs and groves. At Versailles, they include waterfalls in some of the groves, spurts of water in the fountains, and the calm surface of the water reflecting the sky and sun in the Water Parterre or the Grand Canal.
Visitors looking through the central window in the Hall of Mirrors will see the Grande Perspective stretching away towards the horizon from the Water Parterre. This unique east-west perspective originally dates from before the reign of Louis XIV, but it was developed and extended by the gardener André Le Nôtre, who widened the Royal Way and dug the Grand Canal.
In 1661 Louis XIV entrusted André Le Nôtre with the creation and renovation of the gardens of Versailles, which he considered just as important as the Palace. Work on the gardens was started at the same time as the work on the palace and lasted for 40 or so years. During this time André Le Nôtre collaborated with the likes of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Superintendant of Buildings to the King from 1664 to 1683, who managed the project, and Charles Le Brun, who was made First Painter to the King in January 1664 and provided the drawings for a large number of the statues and fountains. Last but not least, each project was reviewed by the King himself, who was keen to see “every detail”. Not long after, the architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart, having been made First Architect to the King and Superintendant of Buildings, built the Orangery and simplified the outlines of the Park, in particular by modifying or opening up some of the groves.
These two large rectangular pools reflect the sun’s rays and light up the outside wall of the Hall of Mirrors. Le Nôtre considered light as an element of decoration in the same way as plant life, and his designs combined a harmonious balance of light and shade.
The Gallery of Great Battles is the largest room in the Palace (120 metres long and 13 metres wide). It covers almost the entire first floor of the South Wing. It was designed in 1833 and construction started the same year. It was solemnly inaugurated on 10 June 1837, constituting the highlight of the visit of the Museum of the History of France.
The Hall of Mirrors, the most famous room in the Palace, was built to replace a large terrace designed by the architect Louis Le Vau, which opened onto the garden. The terrace originally stood between the King’s Apartments to the north and the Queen’s to the south, but was awkward and above all exposed to bad weather, and it was not long before the decision was made to demolish it. Le Vau’s successor, Jules Hardouin-Mansart, produced a more suitable design that replaced the terrace with a large gallery. Work started in 1678 and ended in 1684.
This prestigious series of seven rooms were parade apartments, used for hosting the sovereign’s official acts. For this reason, it was bedecked with lavish Italian-style decoration, much admired by the king at the time, composed of marble panelling and painted ceilings. During the day, the State Apartments were open to all who wished to see the king and the royal family passing through on their way to the chapel. During the reign of Louis XIV, evening gatherings were held here several times a week.
As a teenager, Marguerite Brunet aka Mademoiselle Montansier, ran away from her convent school with a traveling troupe of actors to the Caribbean, and established a dress shop in the French colony of Saint-Domingue. After returning to Paris, she opened up a gambling house that was frequented by the Jeunesse D’Ore. Later, she had a theater in Versailles, and managed to secure the exclusive right to perform at masques and balls in the Palace of Versailles by queen Marie Antoinette, personally. However, even after the revolution, she managed to switch sides, opening another theatre in Paris under the arcades of the Palais Royal. This crafty entrepreneuse was French and European.
via My European Faces: Mademoiselle Montansier, an adventuress, was French & European — Arstyr
Beautiful, talented and unconvential Mary Sidney was counted as the first influential British female poet and playwright. By 1600, she was listed together with her brother Philip Sidney and William Shakespeare as notable authors of her time. Admired by her fellow writers — poet Samuel Daniels wrote more than 30 Sonnets dedicated to her — Lady Sidney was deeply influenced by Continental writers and sought to bring European literary forms to England. She was British and European.
via My European Faces: Mary Sidney, Countess Pembroke, playwright, British, European — Arstyr
The Musée d’Orsay wishes to express its deep sorrow at the tragedy that has struck Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral.
We would also like to extend our gratitude to those men and women who fought to save this emblem of our capital and this monument that belongs to the heritage of humanity.
The President of the French Republic has announced the launch of a national and international public appeal to rebuild the cathedral.
In order to help raise money for this reconstruction, the Government has put in place a shared portal www.rebatirnotredame.gouv.fr that regroups four charitable establishments and foundations authorised to raise funds via donations:
– The Centre des monuments nationaux
– The Fondation Notre Dame / Avenir du Patrimoine à Paris
– The Fondation du patrimoine
– The Fondation de France
These structures work to collect as many donations as possible from France and abroad while honouring certain commitments: full payment of all funds raised, secure payment and guaranteed transparency regarding fund-raising procedures.
From my Biking cruise from Paris to Normandy. First night on the Champs d’Elysses. Who doesn’t love the arc de Triomphe and a rainy night in Paris. All the variety of doors just fascinated me. I could have filled a book with doors and The amazing variety of lampposts. Drawing in the Louvre. Who knew […]
via Day 2047 Some of my favorites — Margaret McCarthy Hunt Art
