Paris Art Museums

During my 2022 trip to Paris, I visited four well-known art museums, the Louvre Museum, Musee d’Orsay, Rodin Museum and Gardens, and Musee National Picasso-Paris. The museums reflected a broad range of time, style, and creativity in international arts. For example, the Louvre shares antiquities from the sixth century B.C. through paintings in the 1890s. The other end of the scale for our visit was Picasso’s cubism. There is never enough time in a city like Paris. I am envious of people who have been able to spend a semester there or can immerse themselves for months at a time.

Louvre Museum

It is challenging to devote only a few paragraphs to the Louvre. I will write here to describe how I felt about the experience. We allowed less than a full day for our visit, which was not enough. The facility has interesting architecture and history in addition to the art. It is the largest museum in the world, a three-sided building extending for several blocks on the two long sides. Not visible from the side streets is the main visitor entrance, the Pyramid, located in the center of the three sides. I was in awe as we exited our ride facing the pyramid, looking around to see the massive complex. I had seen the iconic entrance in books and numerous movies. Standing there, soaking in the history and the scale, was unforgettable.

Once inside, we went straight to the Mona Lisa to avoid the long lines later in the day. I had been told how small it is, but I wish the texture of it had been clearer through the thick protective glass. The painting has been attacked several times, most recently in June 2022. I read Isaacson’s Leonardo da Vinci with its in-depth descriptions of da Vinci’s research and techniques and how they were used in painting the Mona Lisa. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see it well enough to consider those details. Still, it’s the Mona Lisa, one of the most famous paintings in the world. I stood about four feet away. As someone who loves Renaissance art and revers the creative genius of da Vinci, it meant everything to see it in person.

Gazing at the actual art pieces builds a home for that experience in your soul. The pictures in books show the Mona Lisa’s face in great detail to explain the techniques, but they don’t create that feeling of presence that the museum provides. After rushing to get there, I exhaled and absorbed it in a too-brief moment of calm. There were many moments like that on our Paris trip when the history I had learned was within arm’s reach. I was a sponge letting what I saw soak in to connect with the pictures of the art and related facts stored away in my head, enriching that information with greater understanding.

Other works and displays we saw at the Louvre included Venus de Milo, the crown jewels of France, artifacts from the Napoleonic era, and Coronation of the Emperor (a giant painting 20 feet tall by 32 feet wide). The Coronation painting famously shows Napoleon's contempt when he seized the crown from the Pope and placed it on his own head.

Musee d’Orsay

If I could only go to one museum in Paris, it would likely be d’Orsay. Like the Louvre, it is also a surprisingly large facility, a couple of blocks long with six floors. As a converted rail terminal, it has massive clocks that are works of art themselves. The Museum’s collection of Western art spans from 1848 to 1914. Included in that time is the impressionist art period. There was a special exhibit of Edvard Munch while we were there. Munch is the artist who painted the well-known The Scream. Seeing Monet’s works in person two days before seeing his home and gardens in Giverny enriched both experiences. Last fall, I visited “Beyond Van Gogh,” the interactive exhibit in Florida. In d’Orsay, I was able to see his work in person. Making these connections helped me deepen my understanding.

Rodin Museum and Gardens

After Michelangelo, my favorite sculptor is Rodin. Rodin worked during the second half of the 1800s through the early 1900s. Art experts consider him a founder of modern sculpture. Along with the bronze and marble statues and busts, I was intrigued by the displays of hands and of feet he created as models for his work. The seven-and-a-half acres of gardens are as impressive and exciting as the museum’s interior. The most well-known of his works were as wonderful as I imagined. The Kiss was located inside the museum, and The Thinker was in the gardens. I was excited to find the statues of The Gates of Hell and the Burghers of Calais.

Rodin’s The Gates of Hell is enormous. The two doors are almost 20 feet tall and 13 feet wide. The ornate carvings and the doors are just over three feet thick. The doors were inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy – The Inferno. About 180 figures comprise the work. The Burghers of Calais is a group of six figures with a heroic story. I love the story as much as the artistry of the statue. Calais surrendered to the English during the Hundred Years’ War after a lengthy blockade that brought starvation. England’s King offered to spare the city if six leaders offered themselves for execution. King Edward required that they walk out with the town's keys and nooses around their necks. Six volunteered, led by Eustache de Saint Pierre. The six in this statue are shown with sorrow and despair on their faces. According to the original story, the burghers were spared at the last second at the Queen’s request. Willingness to sacrifice oneself for the greater good is always noble, and these men had much to lose.

Musee National Picasso-Paris

The Musee National Picasso had a good representation of Picasso’s styles. His decades-long obsession with the Minotaur was particularly well represented. The museum also had information on his artistic process that I found interesting. I was excited to see his original sketches beside a few finished paintings. Seeing how his mind worked as he moved from a rough idea to a colorful image was helpful. I was thankful that a black and white photograph of him working on a ladder to paint a large-scale canvas was preserved and shared. I estimate the actual painting would have been about 20 feet tall and 12 feet wide. My favorite display in the museum was a rather plain dining-room-style chair enclosed in an acrylic protective case.

The chair had a cloth or canvas over the seat with paint all over that had served as a palette. It also had a few bowls or containers with a wealth of used brushes that looked like he might be back any minute to pick up where he left off painting.

Art on the Streets of Paris

When I think about Paris, I think about great art from around the world. I think about the people on their way to becoming great artists and those who will never be great but have a richer life for having lived that experience. I read the Greater Journey: Americans in Paris by David McCullough many years ago. Americans visited Paris for the arts and other cultural pursuits from the beginning of our country. I have also studied the collection of American artists in Paris in the 1920s. During our trip, we visited a small group of local artists at an open-air art market in Montparnasse. That neighborhood had a tradition of being where the artists gathered in the twenties, and it still retained the reputation of being an artsy area of the city.

There are two museums that I wish I could have visited, the Musee de l'Orangerie and the Centre Pompidou. The Musee de l'Orangerie is famous for an extensive collection of Monet’s water lily paintings, though I saw some at d’Orsay. The Centre Pompidou is in a glass and colorful metal structure that doesn’t fit architecturally in its neighborhood but does fit with the period of art in its collections. Its works are from 1905 to the present. I would like to have seen art from this century.

The museums of Paris are some of the greatest anywhere. I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to stand that close to so many of the world's great works that I had seen only in books before that trip.