The third day of our trip to Paris was spent in Musée de L’Orangerie and its neighbour, Jeu de Paume. I unfortunately wasn’t in a mood for photographing the pieces that I saw in the latter, I just wanted to absorb the art without any distractions. Musée L’Orangerie however did get the photography experience.
The museum is best known for its two circular white rooms, which house the eight grand pieces “Water Lilies” made by the hand of Claude Monet. This was the second time visiting this museum and I was still perplex by the amount of impact these paintings have on me. (If you want to read about my first impression you can head on over to an older blogpost here.)
For these rooms alone you should head on over to this museum. I recommend you take your time, take a seat and let your eyes glide over the monumental canvases.
But let’s not forget about all the other pieces on display. The collection of Jean Walter-Paul Guillaume is the core of Musée L’Orangerie. With work by Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Pablo Picasso, Paul Gauguin, Amedeo Modigliani, Kees Van Dongen, Henri Matisse, Chaïm Soutine, Henri Rousseau, Maurice Utrillo, André Derain, Alfred Sisley and the only female artist Marie Laurencin.
Besides the permanent collection, there’s the exhibition “American paintings in the 1930s”, in which I wasn’t allowed to take any photos. I don’t know much about the American art world, but I was glad to see two pieces of Edward Hopper for the first time. I recently started reading a book about him and my interest grew as the pages turned. Another famous piece was Grant Wood’s American Gothic, one of the most reproduced pieces out there. I wasn’t very keen on any of the other artists, whenever I am in a museum I try to give every piece as much attention as the one hanging next to it, but I was already hit by museumfatigue (after visiting the permanent collection and the Water Lilies by Monet). As a result I walk through the different exposition rooms and stand still in front of the pieces that visually pull me in.
This exhibition runs until the 30th of January 2017. If you are not able to make it to Paris, you’ll have a second chance to see the exhibition in The Royal Academy of Arts (London) from the 24th of February until the 4th of June 2017.
F O L L O W E M I T T R A O N
