Paris Arts Club

Le Nouveau-né (New-born child) circa 1647-8  Musée des Beaux Arts, Rennes The "New-born child" is the most popular painting in the exhibition - the postcards of it ran out after a few days! It is easy to see why. It expresses the holiness of the newly born child, perhaps the Christ child by implication. There are no haloes in the picture, but the artist somehow captures that sacred wonder by his artifice of the candle behind the hand illuminating the baby. Georges de la Tour's candle-lit scenes were extremely fashionable during his lifetime, but after his death his paintings fell into oblivion. A German art historian resurrected his memory in the early 20th century.   Le Souffleur à la pipe (Blower with pipe) 1646  Tokyo Fuji Art Museum In virtuoso fashion, de la Tour illustrates the boy's blowing on an ember to rekindle it. His reds and browns, as in the new baby picture above, give a warm glow to the scene emerging from darkness. Here in the Jacquemart André exhibit...

La Seine à Herblay (The Seine at Herblay) 1890 Musée d'Orsay The summer exhibition in Montmartre examines the different aspects of Maximilien Luce's art and his personality. It also documents the building transformations going on in late 19th century Paris and give us some shimmering pointillist landscapes. A close-up shows his different coloured dots of paint: What is the purpose?... one might ask. Pointillism was a technique experimented with by Seurat, Signac and Pissarro, to encourage the viewer to mix the juxtaposed dots of colour in the eye rather than on the canvas- an extension of the Impressionist technique. The artist would paint a scene on the spot, then afterwards give it the divisionist or pointillist treatment, painstakingly, in the studio. An earlier study of the scene shows how Luce fixed his basic colour scheme:  Study for the Seine at Herblay 1889 Paris, gallery Ary Jan Luce painted the surroundings of Paris, often invited to stay at fellow artists' houses...