After moving from Le Delices, my first stop was the Musée d'Orsay, based on a strong recommendation from a French friend. Located on the left bank of the River Seine, the museum is housed in a former railway station, the Gare d'Orsay, which was built in the late 1800s built in the neoclassical, Beaux-Arts style.
Musée d'Orsay houses a vast collection of art, primarily French - paintings, sculptures, furniture and photography, dating from 1848 to 1915. The museum has a one of the largest collection of impressionist and post-impressionist paintings including Monet, Degas, Renoir, Cézanne, Sisley, Gauguin and Van Gogh.
I approached the museum with great enthusiasm, but got a bit dismayed by the long lines of tourists waiting to enter, but I then realised I had the power of the Paris Pass in my hands that gave me a fast-track, skip the line entry inside...
Statues at the museum's entrance...
Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi's sculpture titled Liberty, which is a replica of the Statue of Liberty, which was gifted by France to America...
Gare d'Orsay was the terminus for the rail-lines running into southwestern France until 1939. However by 1939, the station's short platforms became unsuitable for longer trains that came into use. After 1939, it was used for suburban services within Paris. Additionally, a part of the station became a mailing centre during the Second World War. Subsequently, the station was used as a movie-set and then fell into disuse.
In 1970, permission was granted to demolish the station but this grand building was saved by Jacques Duhamel, the then Minister for Cultural Affairs. In subsequent years, the building was classified as heritage monument. Then the suggestion came to turn the station into a museum that would bridge the gap between the Louvre and the collection of modern art housed at the Georges Pompidou Centre.
In the Central Aisle, I came across Auguste Clésinger's marble sculpture - Femme Piquée Par Un Serpent (Woman Bitten by a Snake)...
Auguste used a plaster cast moulded from life. His model was a Parisian beauty, Apollonie Sabatier...
La Jeune Tarentine by Alexandre Schoenewerk...
James Pradier's marble statue, Sappho, depicts the Greek poetess Sappho, in despair and thinking of suicide...
Jules Cavelier's 1861 marble statue titled "Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi" which shows Cornelia, an example of virtuous Roman woman with Caïus and Tiberus Gracchus...
Eugène Guillaume's sculpture of the Greek poet, Anacréon...
Jules Salmson's bronze scupture, La Dévideuse...
Sortie du Bain, by Paul Cabet...
And I had to remind myself to mind time...
Antonin Mercié's bronze statue, David...
Mercié crafted the statue after the French defeat in the 1870 war with Prussia. The defeat left the French humiliated and longing for revenge. David signified the promise of a France that would one day, despite its weakness, rise against the Prussian Goliath...
Alexandre Falguière's Tarcisius, Martyr Chrétien...
Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux's Ugolino...
Thomas Couture's Romains de la Décadence (Romans during the Decadence) - the painting depicts debauched revelers and gives a moral message moral message. This was explained by Couture , who quoted two lines from the Roman poet Juvenal, "Crueller than war, vice fell upon Rome and avenged the conquered world"...
Ernest Christophe's La Comédie Humaine...
Saint Jean-Baptiste Enfant by Paul Dubois...
Vainqueur au Combat du Coqs (Cockfight Victory) by Alexandre Falguière...
Hébé Endormie (goddess of youth, daughter of Zeus) by Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse...
Eve Apres le Peche - Eve after the fall by Eugene Delaplanche...
Un secret d'en haut (A top secret) by Hippolyte Moulin...
Pan et Oursons by Emmanuel Fremiet...
Sculptures from left to right: Capresse des colonies, Arabe d'el-Aghouat en burnous and Nègre du Soudan...
Les quatre parties du monde soutenant la sphère céleste (The Four Parts of the World Holding the Celestial Sphere) by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux...
La Danse by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux...
No comments:
Post a Comment