European Travelog D4E1: The Lilies of Orangerie

Today's the big day - Monet's water lilies at the Orangerie in the morning and the ocean of history and art at the Louvre in the afternoon.


It's a bright and sunny morning as we set out to Musée de l'Orangerie. Located on the bank of the Seine, to the west of the Tuileries Garden, this building was originally built in 1852 to store the orange trees of the Tuileries garden during the the winter. 


While oranges are great, the claim to fame of this building is as the repository of eight large Water Lilies murals by Claude Monet.

As the museum website says: Offered to the French State by the painter Claude Monet on the day that followed the Armistice of November 11, 1918 as a symbol for peace, the Water Lilies are installed according to plan at the Orangerie Museum in 1927, a few months after his death. This unique set, a true "Sixtine Chapel of Impressionism", testifies to Monet’s later work. It was designed as a real environment and crowns the Water Lilies cycle begun nearly thirty years before. The set is one of the largest monumental achievements of early twentieth-century painting. 

It's an absolutely immersive experience to enter Monet's room and view the large curved panels of water lilies as seen at  different times of the day. Monet was nearly blind as he worked in his final years on what was to be his masterpieces.








A close-up of one of the lilies still captures Monet's brushstrokes.

A combination of purples, yellows, reds and greens capture the lily pads, the flowers, the water and play of light.

The pond at sunset

More pictures of the Water Lilies.

How we did it

We used the Paris Museum Pass. Plan to spend a little over an hour here viewing the Water Lilies as well as the other exhibits at the Orangerie. The museum has a locker for small bags.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A walk around the lake

Image
Henry David Thoreau, in his 1854 book, Walden , narrates his experience of living in solitude for two years, two months, and two days in a cabin he built near Walden Pond, amidst the woodland. While we didn't have the luxury of spending as much time around our neighborhood Kaikondrahalli Lake , this Saturday morning walk around the lake was a delight with the variety of birds, bird calls and nature on exhibition. We reached the lake at around 9 AM by when most of the joggers and serious bird watchers with the telescopic zoom lenses have left. We start the walk with the call and sighting of a White Cheeked Barbet.The barbet is rarely seen outside the thick green foliage of mature trees and it is a rare sighting for us to see it perched on an electric wire. A White Throated Kingfisher flies to its perch - a wall on the edge of the lake and a little egret takes flight, splashing along its liquid runway. We walk towards the lake and
Read more

European Travelog: D1E1 - Winging it

Image
“Paris is always a good idea.”  - Audrey Hepburn On Summer Solstice day in June 2024, when the world was looking east for the International Day of Yoga, we headed west to Europe.  We had an ambitious plan of conquering Paris in three days,  swinging by the sunny coastal town of Montpellier in South of France,  hopping over to Marseille and then a flight to Rome  where we would see the legacy of the Romans and the Renaissance before heading to Florence to see some of Michelangelo's classics  such as David. We would then come back towards Asia by taking the  morning train from Florence to Rome,  the afternoon flight from Rome to Paris  and the night flight from Paris to New Delhi. The morning flight from Bangalore to Mumbai at 8:30 AM was packed with mostly people heading to Maximum City for a day of business and perhaps try to come back by a late evening flight. We reached Mumbai, crossed Immigration and reached the Vistara gate for our Paris flight. As we reach, passengers are ge
Read more

Sikkim - A State of Mind: Day 2

Image
Day Two We're awake at 5:30 AM and it's bright daylight. Our first sight of Sikkim in the daylight shows a land bursting with greenery and flowers.     The valley is shrouded in fog. Occasionally the fog lifts to show glimpses of the mountainside. Everything we see is in  panoramic mode - sweeping hills, rolling clouds and the fog appearing suddenly shrouding the entire landscape in grey. Before we have breakfast, we go for a quick round of birding - there are Mountain Bulbuls, Oriental White Eyes and lots of Mynas. We have a breakfast of Alu Parathas with yogurt and pickle, some toast and marmalade and the teas for which North East India is famous. Our plan for the day is to leave after breakfast for the town of Lachung, in Northern Sikkim. Lachung is the gateway to the Yumthang Valley and Zero Point in Yumesamdong beyond. While it is just 129 km (80 miles) away, the uphill ascent and the bad roads mean that it would take us close to six hours to get there. O
Read more