Bonjour,
Last week, Lee had to visit Paris for a couple of days for work so I tagged along. One of the items on my bucket list before we leave France was to visit the Musee d’Orsay and last time I tried, the queue was a mile long. So this time I booked my ticket in advance and, of course, there were no queues anywhere.
I don’t know why they call it a museum instead of an art gallery. The building was originally a train station for the World Fair in 1900.
It was abandoned for a long time till the French government decided to transform the building into a museum which holds mainly French art, dating from 1848 to 1914. There were many very well known paintings on display and I spent about 5 hours looking at nearly everything there was to see but I can understand how people could spend much longer. Below are some of the more recognisable paintings (sorry about the crookedness, blame the photographer)
One of the best things was to be able to see up close the way these paintings are done. Here is a fun fact, many of those on display were done in the ‘neo impressionism‘ style.
(The term Neo–Impressionism refers to a pictorial technique where color pigments are no longer mixed either on the palette or directly on canvas, but instead placed as small dots side by side. Mixing of colors takes place from a suitable distance, in the observor’s eye, as an “optical mixture“. You learn something every day. Here is an example – see the detail of the hand in the bottom right corner.
My visit also included checking out the Christmas decorations in Galleries Lafayette and did not disappoint, although I don’t think they have finished yet.
Another bucket list item was the Paris Opera House. The French really have a handle on opulence. It is very much in use nearly every night for opera or ballet performances with tickets starting around €100. I wasn’t really expecting much but it was stunning, the detail on even the doorknobs, curtain sashes and out of the way corners was amazing. Well worth a visit.
Those were the highlights of the visit. But can’t sign off without mentioning that November is offal month in France. That’s right, offal has it’s own month. You can buy offal anytime, but there is a lot more of it around in November because the calves that were born in summer have now reached the 20 week mark, so they are slaughtered and there is a sudden glut of testicles, sweetbreads, heads and hearts.
Au revoir
L & M.
thefrenchfeed 