The Paris Opera House: Continued

The artwork and architecture of the Paris Opera House was incredible.

It is nearly impossible to imagine the opulence.

It was built between 1861 and 1875

The Palais Garnier: The Opera House

If you ever get to Paris, you must stop at the Opera House.  It was stunning.  While wandering around, we noticed performers, not singing, must acting out on the balcony's.  In this case, he was begging for her attention.   And, as they moved through the crowds, he kept missing her.

Claude Monet's "Le Jardin de l' artiste a Giverny"

Or, the Garden at Giverny.

Done in 1990, it is an oil on canvas by Claude Monet.  It currently hands in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris. It is one of many works by the artist of his garden at Giverny over the last thirty years of his life. The painting shows rows of irises in various shades of purple and pink set diagonally across the picture plane. The flowers are under trees that in allowing dappled light through change the tone of their colours. Beyond the trees is a glimpse of Monet's house.

Renoir's "Paysage algerien, la ravin de la Femme sauvage"

One of Renoir's landscapes, done in 1881.

I must say that I like the color's.   But, it struck me as too busy.  Much as a photograph with too much detail distracts from the image.   

Degas, Dancers in Blue

Blue Dancers, or sometimes referred to as Dancers in Blue, was done in 1890.  It is one of Degas' most famous painting.  

This artwork features a favored composition for Degas in the formation of his modelling ballerinas. He would continue this method of grouping dancers throughout the 1890s, constantly experimenting with color upon the same theme.

Degas would typically paint or sketch in the same direction as his ballerinas would stretch and twist. He discovered this technique ensured a greater lifelike depiction.

Dancers in Blue, 1890 was one of his later ballet dancer paintings. By this stage he had moved away from some of his artistic choices for his dancers that he used earlier in his career. For example, he would include content around the individual dancer's backgrounds and also the angles from which they may be viewed in the crowd.

I found it beautiful.   

Renoir's La Liseuse

Or, in English, "The Reader" (1876)

Once again, I am stunned with how close I can get to masterpieces.   I thought this was beautiful.

Renoir's Bal du moulin de la Galette

One of two.  This is the larger.  The second is smaller and is believed to be in a private collection in Switzerland.

From Wikipedia:

Renoir conceived his project of painting the dancing at Le Moulin de la Galette in May 1876 and its execution is described in full by his civil servant friend Georges Rivière in his memoir Renoir et ses amis.^[2] In the first place, Renoir needed to set up a studio near the mill. A suitable studio was found at an abandoned cottage in the rue Cortot with a garden described by Rivière as a "beautiful abandoned park".^[2]:130 Several of Renoir's major works were painted in this garden at this time, including La balançoire (The Swing). The gardens and its buildings have been preserved as the Musée de Montmartre.
Rivière identified several of the personalities in the painting. Despite Renoir's resource of distributing a sought after fashionable hat of the time amongst his models (the straw bonnet with a wide red ribbon top right is an example of this hat, called a timbale), he was unable to persuade his favourite sixteen-year-old model Jeanne Samary, who appears in La balançoire, to pose as principal for the painting (in fact she was conducting an affair with a local boy at the time). It is her sister Estelle who poses as the girl wearing a blue and pink striped dress. These two girls came to Le Moulin every Sunday with their family; with two younger sisters barely taller than the tables, and their mother and father, properly chaperoned by their mother (entry was free for girls at Le Moulin and not all were models of virtue). Beside her is a group consisting of Pierre-Franc Lamy and Norbert Goeneutte (also appearing in La balançoire), fellow painters, as well as Rivière himself. Behind her, amongst the dancers, are to be found Henri Gervex, Eugène Pierre Lestringuez and Paul Lhote (who appears in Dance in the Country). In the middle distance, in the middle of the dance hall, the Cuban painter Don Pedro Vidal de Solares y Cardenas is depicted in striped trousers dancing with the model called Margot (Marguerite Legrand). Apparently the exuberant Margot found Solares too reserved and was endeavouring to loosen him up by dancing polkas with him and teaching him dubious songs in the local slang. She was to die of typhoid just two years later, Renoir nursing her until the end, paying both for her treatment and her funeral.^{[2]:136–7[3][5]}
Rivière describes the painting as executed on the spot and that not without difficulty as the wind constantly threatened to blow the canvas away. This has led some critics to speculate that it was the larger d'Orsay painting that was painted here, as the smaller would have been easier to control. On the other hand, the smaller is much the more spontaneous and freely worked of the two, characteristic of en plein air work.^[3]

Renoir's Portrait of Alphonesine Fournaise

Alphonsine Fournaise was the woman in straw boater standing at the rail in the center of Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party  (1879)

She was the daughter of the owner of a restaurant Renoir frequented with his friends.  

Paul Cezanne's La Maison du pendu, Auvers-sur-Oise

Or, in English, The Hanged Man's House.

From Musee de Orsay:

The Hanged Man's House was one of the three canvases that Cézanne presented at the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874. The influence of his friend Camille Pissarro, with whom he regularly worked in the region of Pontoise and Auvers-sur-Oise, is clearly perceptible. Compared to his early works, Cézanne has used the pale colours and broken brushstrokes of the Impressionists. He has also given up dramatic or literary themes for a simple, even commonplace subject. But The Hanged Man's House reveals Cézanne's peculiar brand of Impressionism.

The composition of the canvas is complicated. There are several strong axes leading away from a central point: a path which climbs to the left; another which leads down towards the centre of the painting; a bank curving away to the right; the branches of the trees angling off to the top of the painting. The planes are close set. The thickness of the grainy brushstrokes seems to 'plaster' the painting. The lack of people, the stiff, austere vegetation, and the cool colours help to create a strong sense of solitude.

Although the painting puzzled the critics when it was first shown, it was nonetheless the first that Cézanne managed to sell to a collector.

Manet's La Blonde aux seins nus

The Blonde, Topless

Not to be confused by the 2010 movie of the same name.  

Monet's Lunch on the Grass

I find the back stories just wonderful.

This fragment, there is a second also in the Musée d'Orsay, is one of the remaining parts of the monumental Luncheon on the Grass by Monet. The work was started in the spring of 1865 and measured over four metres by six. It was intended to be both a tribute and a challenge to Manet whose painting of the same title had been the subject of much sarcasm from the public as well as the critics when it was exhibited in the Salon des Refusés in 1863. But the project was abandoned in 1866, just before the Salon where Monet intended to show it, opened.
In 1920, the painter himself recounted what had happened to the picture: "I had to pay my rent, I gave it to the landlord as security and he rolled it up and put in the cellar. When I finally had enough money to get it back, as you can see, it had gone mouldy." Monet got the painting back in1884, cut it up, and kept only three fragments. The third has now disappeared.

Manet's Bazille's Studio: 1870

A wonderful history and background to Manet's painting.

Born into a notable family in Montpellier, Bazille moved to Paris in 1862 to study medicine, before turning to painting. While at Charles Gleyre's studio, he became friends with Monet, Renoir and Sisley who shared his admiration for Manet. Bazille's Studio allows a glimpse of the relationships and intimacy uniting these precursor artists.

The scene is set in the studio in the rue de la Condamine which Bazille shared with Renoir from January 1st 1868 to May 15th 1870. Bazille is in the centre, a palette in his hand. But as he wrote in a letter to his father: "Manet painted me in". One can in fact see Manet's vigorous style in the tall, slim figure of the young man. And indeed, Manet, wearing a hat, is looking at the canvas placed on the easel. On the right, Edmond Maître, a friend of Bazille, is seated at the piano. Above him, a still life by Monet is a reminder that Bazille helped him financially by buying his work. The three characters on the left are more difficult to identify – possibly Monet, Renoir or even Zacharie Astruc... By surrounding Manet and his admirers with some of his paintings that were refused by the Salon, such as The Toilette (Montpellier, Musée Fabre) above the sofa, and Fisherman with a Net (Zürich, Fondation Rau) higher up on the left, and even more realistically Renoir's "landscape with two people" rejected at the 1866 Salon (the large, framed canvas to the right of the window), Bazille is expressing his criticism of the Academy, and affirming his own vision of art. His death in combat some months later, during the Franco-Prussian war, made this work a moving testament.

Les Quatre parties du monde soutenant la sphere celeste: Jean Baptiste Carpeneaux

Or,

Four parts of the world holding a celestial sphere.

Jean Escoula's La Douleur

I don't believe this is the original La Douleur of 1897.    That was in marble.  This looks much too weathered and doesn't appear to be marble.

Still, I liked the passion of the face.   

Aristide Maillol's Mediterranee dit aussi La Pensee

A beautiful marble figure, presented in 1905 under the title "Woman".

The original, in limestone, is in Switzerland.

Picasso, I believe

I believe this is a Picasso, in his early years.  But, I am not entirely certain.  I haven't been able to find it to verify it.

Regardless, it was at the Musee d'Orsay.

Comments are welcome, of course for those who can confirm the artist.

Auguste Rodin

Saint Jean Baptiste

Bronze.   Approximately 1878-1881