Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from July, 2021

Hôtel de la Marine - A historic place to visit

The hôtel de la Marine, on the place de la Concorde, opened its doors  to the public  in June 2021  after more than five years' spent under restoration. It is a fascinating 'new' (250 years old) palace to visit in a central location. The building is the last royal construction in Paris, dating back to 1758. In front of the palace balcony, French history has been played out, from the Liberation of Paris in 1944 back to the tragic firework display of May 1770 celebrating the marriage of Marie Antoinette and the future Louis XVI. The fireworks store caught fire and hundreds of people died. The arcades of the building were full of people fleeing. Many drowned in the Seine. The event was later seen as a bad omen for their marriage. It certainly was. 23 years later, in  January 1793,  Louis XVI  was guillotined on the square and 8 months later his widow Marie Antoinette followed him. The impressive palace was built for Louis XV by architect Anges-Jacques Gab...

"Dufy's Paris" at the musée de Montmartre

  A familiar view of Montmartre greets the visitor at this exhibition, which runs until next January. It is the "Moulin de la Galette", the open-air dance hall in the garden of an old windmill on the top of the hill. The work here is not by Renoir (actually in the musée d'Orsay), but Raoul Dufy's light sketchy version of the Renoir. Dufy was a native of Le Havre, on the Normandy coast. His first job was working for a coffee importer near the port. The tangled lines of masts and riggings were a familiar sight to him. His evening drawing classes led to a  scholarship at the Beaux Arts in Paris, supervised by Léon Bonnat.  He came to Paris in 1899, aged 21, and lived at different addresses alternating between the left bank and right bank. In 1900 he shared a studio with fellow artist from Le Havre Otto Friesz in the very house which is now the Montmartre Museum.  Other artists who lived or worked here include Renoir, in 1876, the year before Raoul Dufy was born. Renoir ...