Tuesday May 10th- Musee D' Orsay, Musee Rodin and Invalides

This morning after breakfast at St. John's (where I'm staying) I left for the D' Orsay.  I stopped en route and purchased a double espresso (Cafe Florio is the one I've been drinking).  By the time I arrived, the line was outrageous.

The bummer about the D' Orsay (and I'd forgotten about this) is that there is no photography allowed- period.  There are so many unique things I've never seen reproduced that it is a major temptation to try and sneak some.  The rooms of Degas pastel drawings and paintings, Ingres' The Source, Madonna with The Host and numerous studies, and a number of orientalist painters not as well known (Edouard Sain, Jean Louis Hamon, etc.)  A huge bronze by Gerome greeted me as I entered the main hall.   Plenty of XIX century sculptors not well-known either: Auguste Clesinger, Jules Salmson, Alexandre Schoenewerk, etc.) I am going to go back and draw from a number of the statuary here. There was a lot more room than the Louvre and a place to sit.

I risked getting kicked out off the museum for a couple of Bouguereau's (in part because I had some cover.  There was an Ingres Odalisque study I wanted to photograph for my friend, but it wasn't to be.)

Next stop was Musee Rodin, which I've neglected to see in previous trips.  An amazing piece of real estate and wonderful seeing various pieces of work in various materials at various states of completion.

Once inside I was taken with the presentation of the work in the space.  As I said, much of the work is various states of completion and is great to see so much process.  Here's a sampling of some of the rooms.

 Some really powerful work and I felt extremely moved by the gestural sensitivity in the work.  My two favorite pieces were these two gems.

 

Getting an idea of how intense these visits are?  Its really amazing to have this much to look at.  Incredibly moving collections.  I left the museum and went off in search of lunch.  I'll report on that in another post.  Next it was off to the Musee l'Armee/ Invalides to see Napoleon's Tomb and some Ingres and Delaroche.

The hospital is an amazing structure in itself.  The first thing that I find striking is the gold-leafed cupola.  I overheard a docent mentioning there are 18,000 leaves of gold applied on the dome.  Not sure how much that is, or if the docent was correct. However, to see the sun reflecting off the dome is simply magical.

I headed off to see Napoleon's tomb under the cupola. On the way learned that the interior courtyard was a recreation Napoleon's housing on Elba where he was exiled.  Apparently, the trees, their placement and the dimensions were identical.

I went around the back to the tomb entrance and was blown away by the beauty of it.  Napoleon was brought back to Paris after he died from an apparent arsenic poisoning from the British. Here are some pics of the tomb.

My favorite part of the visit was seeing three paintings in person for the first time: Ingres' portrait of Napoleon he painted at age 25, Paul Delaroche's painting of Napoleon depicted in his apartment at Fontainebleau and Meissonier's grisaille study of his equestrian portrait of Napoleon. The two best parts of the three was there was no one to there to see them and you could drag your nose across the surface of them without a security guard barking at you!

You can't really make out the raw sienna in the photo, but a beautiful warm glow emits from under the grisaille here.  Amazing how little his paintings are.

And finally, the Delaroche!  Much of his work doesn't reproduce well.  Most of his darks seem to fill in so this was a complete surprise.  They had the painting lit hard from the upper right and the background was a deep transparent red.  I did manage to get some nice close-ups of his hand.  Here are a couple of photos.