Paris: Museums & Memories

I first went to Paris when I was 18 years old with my sister and my uncle. We stayed in an apartment in Le Marais, visited museums, climbed the stairs of Montmartre, and ate ice cream by the Seine. I loved it, as I knew I would, and returned a year later to study art history at La Sorbonne. In the art history building near Luxembourg gardens, I studied Italian Renaissance art, the Flemish masters, and contemporary photography, and on weekends frequented the many museums.

Since that year, I've lived relatively nearby—first in London and then in Brussels—and so could easily return to Paris for short visits. Over the years, I always went back: for conferences, art exhibitions, and to visit a good friend, whom I met in a university auditorium, our meet-cute involving a canceled lecture and a serendipitous coffee date.

Before my trip to Paris this April, it had been over three years since my last visit. I was bursting with excitement to be back. With only a few days in the city, my schedule was overflowing with museum, theatre, and dinner plans, and with important free pockets of time to sit, people-watch, and enjoy a drink, a coffee, or a croissant aux amandes.

I chose to visit two impressive and connected museums: Musée d’Orsay & Musée de l’Orangerie, which are organized together under the EPMO. These two museums house artwork from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a period of immense artistic innovation. If I have to choose one, my favourite museum of all time is Musée d’Orsay. The stunning building, completed in 1900, the year of the Exposition Universelle, was originally a train station. The building became an art museum in the 1970s and is celebrated for its Impressionism and Post-Impressionism collections. Many of my favourite artists—van Gogh, Monet, Toulouse-Lautrec—are well represented here.

In front of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Panneaux pour la baraque de la Goulue, à la Foire du Trône à Paris, 1895, at Musée d’Orsay.

On now, until July 23 of this year, is the exhibition Manet/Degas, which looks at the relationship between the artists and their work in the late 1800s. Despite shared themes of Parisian life, the styles of the two masters diverged, with Manet depicting modern (and for the time shocking) subjects (see Olympia) with a new yet more traditional style while Degas leaned more towards the loose brushwork and pastel colour palette of the contemporary Impressionists (see Le Tub). Side by side, it was interesting to see how the artists’ work connected and diverged from one another, how they each responded to the context of their time, and indeed how their work shaped the art of the nineteenth century and beyond.

A view of Edgar Degas, Diego Martelli (1839-1896), 1879, on loan from the National Galleries of Scotland, Musée d’Orsay.

The Musée de l’Orangerie houses the impressive waterlily panoramas by Claude Monet. According to the museum website, Monet worked with architect Camille Lefèvre on the rooms in which the 8 painted panels are installed. Although these rooms are most often bustling with visitors, central benches provide an opportunity to sit and take in the large paintings in your own time.

From afar, Monet’s ponds emanate cohesive atmospheric blues yet upon closer inspection, they contain the colours of the rainbow. This kaleidoscopic use of colour that evokes light is the cornerstone of the Impressionist tradition, which got its name from the critic Louis Leroy when he described an earlier painting of Monet's as a mere impression. I love the way in which Monet’s minimalistic gestures (an ellipse to represent a lily pad, for example) are enough to suggest, or indeed give an "impression" of the pond and its plants. The simplicity of the marks that indicate the plants together with the rich colour palette of the ponds and the immense size of these paintings inspires a simultaneous feeling of awe and of calm, excitement and peace.

Taking in one of Monet's water lily panels at Musée de l’Orangerie.

Paris holds some of my most special memories. When I visit the city, I often return to “my” neighbourhood, retracing the routes I walked, popping into the shops and cafés that were my favourites for a year, over a decade ago. I take note of what has changed and what has stayed the same. Despite my longstanding love of Paris, I was surprised by the intense feelings of nostalgia and homesickness I experienced for the city during this visit. Taking a cue from the museums, which are both places of history and of continual growth (new exhibitions, events, etc.), I am learning that expanding what Paris means to me today doesn't detract from what this place meant to me in the past. With each visit, I add to my memory bank. I couldn’t help feeling a little heartbroken to leave but smiled at the thought of returning soon.

Me in Paris in 2009 during my year abroad.

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