A day out in Paris
Van Gogh in Auvers-sur-Oise exhibit followed by a stroll through galleries on the Left Bank
I’d been recommended the Van Gogh in Auvers-sur-Oise exhibit at the Musee d’Orsay so thought I’d make a day trip of it and explore Paris. I was initially going to focus on the exhibit itself in this blog, but as you’ll read, I wasn’t mega impressed - SO I’m writing about my day out as a whole, which was super fun.
Musée d’Orsay
Femmes au jardin - Claude Monet
The space is absolutely stunning - the building used to be a train station and was used during the Second World War as a dispatch centre and then a reception centre for prisoners of war. The vaulted ceiling is the same and true to its origins, you genuinely feel like you’re travelling through time and art.
As I got there early, I took the time to explore the row of sculptures, intending to get in line early. However, the galleries on both sides of the hall beckoned, and yep you guessed it - in I went. I was initially apprehensive, as the galleries looked quite dark before you enter, so was worried the vibe would be gloomy - I was happily proved wrong.
Le Fifre - Édouard Manet
Each mini gallery has a skylight, allowing the natural lighting from the main hall to filter through. This meant there was only a need for soft artificial lighting for the paintings, which created a serene, calm atmosphere. A key example of this was in the Monet / Renoir mini gallery, the lights are really soft and don’t reflect on the oil, so you can really appreciate the whole piece - unlike how I noticed it at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Nice).
Some thoughts on the works I saw as I meandered through:
Monet captures the shadows really elegantly in La Pie
Manet’s Le Fifre is quite vivid (is this his new style of painting??)
Monet’s Femmes au jardin really stands out, especially with the red wall behind it - this was a common feature throughout the museum, which really made the paintings pop and drew the eye
Clearly I have a thing of being drawn to a lot of moon paintings - see Millet’s Le Parc à moutons, clair de lune and Manet’s Clair de lune sur le port de Boulogne
I passed by a Renoir painting, Portrait de femme, dit de Mme Georges Hartmann, and had an odd flashback to primary school and vague memories of doing a presentation on Renoir and his brushwork ~memories~
Yes I did go into the Max and Rosy Kaganovitch Collection gallery because it had my name on it (misspelt but close enough), they had some smaller Van Gogh and Bonnard paintings, including one done at St-Rémy-de-Provence, which is near where I grew up!
Exhibit: Van Gogh in Auvers-sur-Oise
Autoportrait - Vincent Van Gogh
Ok here we go, my review of / thoughts on the Van Gogh exhibit:
In line for Van Gogh exhibit 😊 Vibes are high, queue is long, but got my book. As an FYI, I booked for 1pm on a Wednesday with no school holidays - it was packed and the wait times went from 20 minutes for those who had pre-booked to an hour and a half if you hadn’t (so definitely book).
My attempt at understanding the Post-Impressionism style: is it like he deconstructs Impressionism into more noticeable / bigger individual strokes / dots and shapes?
Update: Post-Impressionists extended Impressionism while rejecting its limitations. They continued using vivid colours, sometimes using thick applications of paint (called impasto) and painting from life, but were more inclined to emphasise geometric forms, distort forms for expressive effect, and use unnatural or modified colours. (I wasn’t too far off!)
It’s not that I’m not enjoying the works but the organisation of the exhibit is chaotic. It’s quite warm in here, there are way too many people to really take the time to see the pieces I want, or even get close enough to read the information plaques (and even if you do, you feel like you can’t take more than maybe 10 seconds before someone tuts behind you). And having seen the line for people who did not pre-book, it felt like I couldn’t take my time. I did get to see his self-portrait up close, which felt like a art-bucket list moment.
Some really interesting quotes on the walls, including “Ah well, really we can only make our paintings speak”, which was written to his brother Theo on the day of Van Gogh’s suicide attempt.
Love that they have his palette and brush from working on Marguerite Gachet au piano - so cool and really well preserved.
I did feel a tad overwhelmed with the crowd and the temperature so popped off to the gift shop (not surprising). However, I only then realised that I hadn’t seen La Nuit étoilée 😂
Exploring the Carré Rive Gauche
After a lovely lunch by the river, I wandered around and stumbled (literally - thanks, cobblestones) upon the 1831 Gallery. It’s part of the Carré Rive Gauche association, which represents famous art and antique stores in the neighbourhood.
Mémoire by Aude Herlédan
I popped in as this one piece in particular caught my eye. To make it, she used gold leaf and lava ash (!!!!!) - how cool is that?! Apparently the artist loves to experiment with materials and that one was not what I expected the shop assistant to say. I did make an enquiry and unfortunately it’s well (well) out of my price range, but I’m still harbouring that hope for my giant mansion and lottery win - one day.
I also went into the Roger-Viollet gallery, which had an exhibit on Boris Lipnitzki’s photographic chronicle of life in 1930s Paris. It was pretty cool to see his interactions with figures I recognised:
The thing with a day in Paris is that you can never really be disappointed at the end of it. As much as I feel I didn’t get the best or the most out of the Van Gogh exhibit, I loved visiting the Musée d’Orsay and exploring the Left Bank, with its galleries, shops, squares, and cafés. The 22,000+ steps also felt great and my day trip helped me keep up my French, so will definitely be doing this again and hope you will, too!