Paris for Vacation

Current Exhibition: Musée de l'Orangerie: Jardin des Tuileries

What: Musée de l'Orangerie: Jardin des Tuileries, 75001 Paris.
Web site: www.musee-orangerie.fr or www.rmn.fr
Underground: Concorde.
Phone: 01 44 77 80 07.
Open Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday-Monday, 12:30 p.m.-7 p.m.; Friday, 12:30 p.m.-9 p.m.
Closed Tuesday.
Admission: €7.70. Through March 5.
A new temporary exhibition is currently taking place at the renovated Musée de l'Orangerie.

The curators of the original show wanted to illustrate the "spirit of realism" that they saw as a characteristic of French painting from the time of the primitives to Chardin and Corot. Today's curator, sees this spirit manifested in the "intimate relationship" between real life and the painter, and through him the viewer.

You will be able to enjoy paintings by well-known 20th-century painters such as Magritte, Picasso, Léger, Balthus, and Maurice Denis

 For the general public, the exhibition offers  a lot of styles: portraits, still lifes, landscapes, genre paintings, and historical and biblical scenes, with little to tie them together except the fact that they were painted in the 17th century.

De la Tour's famous "The Cheat with the Ace of Diamonds," is also on show, and it's fun to compare the latter with the versions of it painted by Robert Humblot and Balthus in the 20th-century section of the exhibition. The eyes of the subjects in de la Tour's canvas clue the viewer into the scam that is occurring, with the cheaters casting meaningful looks at each other, while the hapless victim's eyes are trustingly cast downward. es down at the floor off to the side.

Don't miss the amusing "Allégorie de l'Air, ou La Chasse de la Duchesse Nicole de Lorraine," by C. Deruet, an all-female hunting scene in which numerous elegantly dressed ladies, many of them holding falcons, sit decorously on their steeds, with the exception of one, who is most indecorously falling off her horse, with legs flying up in the air.

posted by Paris for Vacation @ 1:49 PM