After yesterday's disappointing Paris quilt shop visit I needed a great day to end my week. I ventured to the Orange Museum, or as the French would say, Musee de l'Orangerie. This is a small museum close to the Louvre that houses two huge rooms of ...
Claude Monet water lily paintings. The display is incredible. (I feel pretty lucky today!) The building is at the west end of the Tuileries Gardens...which was the palace gardens of the French royalty. This building was used to store the orange trees during the cold months...hence the museum's name.
If you are entranced by Monet like I am...take this virtual tour on the museum's website, http://www.musee-orangerie.fr/homes/home_id25184_u1l2.htm
To the right of the photo box is a diagram of the gallery. Salle in French means "room" so click on salle 1 or 2...then hold your mouse down and you will get a 360-degree view of the room.
These paintings are larger than life...just over 6-foot tall and ranging from 30 to 55 feet long. The rooms have primarily natural light...perfect for impressionist interpretation. This museum will require frequent visits to view the paintings in different lighting conditions and I am up to the task! Just wish there was a season pass available. It is an inexpensive visit...just a little more than the cost of a venti latté from Starbucks.
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| Renoir's "Seated Bather Drying Her Leg" - 1914. |
In the basement there is a nice display of many famous Renoir paintings plus the post impressionist-pre modern works of Cézanne, Matisse and Picasso. It is one of my favorite museums so far...can you tell?
The use of color in these water lily paintings is so inspirational...I could envision so many quilts as I sat looking at them. It's probably a good thing I haven't found any batiks to buy over here or I might go crazy...these paintings just scream to me to quilt with batiks. Might be time to finally load EQ7 on my laptop.
4 comments:
WOW!! Those paintings are fabulous to look at through the computer screen. I can't imagine how fabulous they would be in person!And I can see how the remind you of batiks.
Wow, what an amazing find. Good for you. It looks like just the right place to find peace and inspiration. I love the middle one, is the painting really framed curved as is shown in your picture? I have never seen anything quite like it.
lovely! to be in an area with so much art would be wonderful - here - nada!
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