Paris Day 4 on

Very busy day.  Musee D'Orsay, Sainte Chapelle and an evening 1 hour tour at night on a boat on the Seine to see the City of Lights from the water. 

I will put in a sampling of art that I liked, but there was so much to see.  

Musee D'Orsay - a former train station built in 1898 and 1900 and was used until 1939.  By 1939 the station's short platforms had become unsuitable for the longer trains that had come to be used for mainline services. In 1981, the Italian architect Gae Aulenti was chosen to design the interior including the internal arrangement, decoration, furniture and fittings of the museum. Upon it's completion, it took 6 months to install the 2,000 or so paintings, 600 sculptures and other works. The museum officially opened in December 1986 by then-president François Mitterrand.  

I am amazed at the draping and folds of the fabric on this sculpture

Notice the young person standing on a high dive board contemplating a jump.  Since 2006, the museum has been building contemporary art into its historic program with ongoing temporary exhibitions called “Correspondences."  With a new show at Musée d’Orsay, Elmgreen and Dragset are writing fragile masculinities back into Art History.  A cast of soft and solitary characters permeates the halls.

Not a real child.

Real children

Child with reality goggles on

Degas

 This portrait looked almost like a photograph to me.  Like so.eo e we might know today. 

But of course there are still the iconic paintings that are still admired today

 Guess which person is a self portrait of the artist himself 

Doesn't she look like she is having a good time dancing? 

I liked the boats reflection in the water

The dotted vail and tarten scarf  was a pleasing contrast

Partially finished work (needed the money for the rent)

Chrysanthemum flowers - thought Claude Monet captured the petals on these flowers quite well.

And of course an Art Museum had to have an artsy cafeteria...  Loved the orange wire room dividers and the chairs and lamps.  All so unique.

One of the several clocks in the museum as seen from the interior.  The picture below shows the clocks from an exterior view.

  

Oops, how did those get in here???

The Sainte-Chapelle is a royal chapel in the Gothic style, within the medieval Palais de la Cité, the residence of the Kings of France until the 14th century, on the Île de la Cité in the River Seine. Construction began sometime after 1238 and the chapel was consecrated on 26, April 1248.  It consists of a lower and upper chapel.  The two levels of the new chapel, equal in size, had entirely different purposes. The upper level, where the sacred relics were kept, was reserved exclusively for the royal family and their guests.   It makes particular use of sculpture, painting and the art of stained glass.  It is its immense original historiated stained glass windows that today make the wealth of the Sainte-Chapelle, because it was deprived of its relics during the French Revolution, and thus lost its main reason for being.  It was decided to restore the Sainte-Chapelle in 1836.  

Lower Chapel

Upper Chapel

One of the Apostles adorning the upper chapel.  Below this is a close up of the detailing on his beard.

Only way up and down to the upper chapel was a narrow, winding staircase

On our way to the Seine River Boat cruise to see the city lit up at night.