Jardin du Ranelagh, Musée Marmottan Monet and The Musée

Jardin du Ranelagh,
Musée Marmottan
Monet and
The Musée National
du Moyen Âge,
formerly
Musée de Cluny
April 30, 2016
Jardin du Ranelagh
Jardin du Ranelagh
Located in the upscale16th Arrondissement
the Jardin de Ranleagh has a suface area of
60,500 m` and was created in 1860 by Baron
Haussman. Before the park was created, a
Frenchman who admired Lord Ranelagh’s
success decided to create an exceptional
dancehall under his name. But the plans fell
through and so Baron Haussman became
owner of the site and created the magnificent
park.
Decorated by statues and all types of beautiful
trees, the garden is welcoming for both children and adults. Located nearby are Musée
Marmottan and the très chic Rue de Passy
shopping area.
Musée Marmottan Monet
Former hunting lodge of Christophe Edmond Kellerman, Duke of Valmy, the Marmottan Monet Museum
was bought in 1882 by Jules Marmottan. His son Paul
settled in it, and had another hunting lodge built to
house his private collection of art pieces and First Empire paintings.
Upon his death he bequeathed all his collections, his
town house – which will become the Marmottan Monet
Museum in 1934 – and the Boulogne Library's historical rich historical archives to the French Academy of
Fine Arts.
In 1957, the Marmottan Monet Museum received the
private collection of Madame Victorine Donop de
Rainy Day in Paris at the Crossroads of the Rue
Monchy as a donation inherited from her father, Doctor
De Turin and Rue de Moscow Georges de Bellio, one of the first lovers' of impressionGustave Caillebotte
ism whose patients included Manet, Monet, Pissaro,
Sisley, and Renoir.
In 1966, Michel Monet, the painter’s second son, bequeathed his property in Giverny to the French Academy
of Fine Arts and his collection of paintings, inherited
from his father, to the Marmottan Monet Museum.
This donation endowed the Museum with the largest
Claude Monet collection in the world. On this occasion, the academician architect and museum curator,
Jacques Carlu, built a room inspired from the Grandes
Décorations in the Tuilerie’s Orangerie to house the
collection.
The works acquired by Henri Duhem and his wife
Mary Sergeant splendidly completed this fund in 1987
through the generosity of their daughter Nelly Duhem.
A painter and post-impressionists himself, Henri
Duhem also was a passionate art collector and gathered
the works of his contemporaries.
The Denis and Annie Rouart Foundation was created in 1996 within the Marmottan Monet Museum, in compliance with the benefactress' wishes. The Museum was hence enriched with prestigious works by Berthe Morisot,
Bras de Seine a Giverny 1897 Claude Monet
Les Agapanthes 1914-1917
Claude Monet
Edouard Manet, Edgar Degas, and Henri
Rouart.
In 1980, Daniel Wildstein gave the Museum
the exceptional illumination collection put
together by his father. Throughout the years,
other major donations have come to enrich the
Marmottan Monet Museum collections: Emile
Bastien Lepage, Vincens Bourguereau, Henri
Le Riche, Jean Paul Léon, André Billecocq,
Gaston Schulmann, Florence Gould Foundation, Cila Dreyfus, and Thérèse Rouart.
This lower room at left was designed and built
to give the viewer the unique opportunity to
admire all the significant stages of the master
painter’s career and follow the evolution of
his technique: from his youth caricatures of
Le Havre’s personalities or Parisian critics, to
the paintings inspired by his Giverny garden.
En Promanade Pres d’Argenteull 1875 Claude Monet
Le Train dans la Neige, La Locomotive 1876 Claude
Monet
Le Pont de l’Europe, Gare Saint-Lazare 1877
Claude Monet
La Jardin a Bougival 1884 Berthe Morisot
My fav...
L’Allee des Rosiers Giverny 1920-1922
Claude Monet
During this period Monet suffered from cataracts
which affected his sight and choice of color.
Eugene Manet et sa fille dans le Jardin de
Bougival 1881 Berthe Morisot
Impression, Soleil Levant 1872 Claude Monet
Fiancee au Visage Bleu 1956 Marc Chagall
L'art et l'enfant
Musée Marmottan Monet presents, the exhibition L'art et
l'enfant, from private collections and prestigious French and
foreign museums one hundred masterpieces of French painting,
by Le Nain, Champaigne, Fragonard, Chardin, Greuze, Corot,
Millet, Manet, Monet, Morisot, Renoir, Cezanne, Matisse, and
Picasso, compose a unprecedented collection. Through a selection of rare paintings, the course traces the evolution of the
status of the child fifteenth to the twentieth century and questions ultimately on the role of childlike drawing of the vanguards
of the early last century.
An invitation to discover a new face masterpieces as L'enfant au
toton de Chardin, the heads displayed beaked and The knitting
lesson Millet, The Bugle Eva Gonzales, the small merchant violets Peel, Walk Argenteuil Monet, Eugène Manet and her daughter Julie Berthe Morisot, children of Martial Caillebotte and
Renoir's the lesson, the ball Vallotton, Pierre Matisse's portrait
and the painter and the child of Picasso.
Les Enfants de Martial Caillebotte 1895
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Petite Fille Mangeant des Cerises 1817
Jeanne Elisabeth Chaudet
Un Martyr Le Marchand de Violettes 1885
Fernand Pelez
These two paintings of presumably orfaned children living in
the streets really moved me. The child at right is clearly a prostitute. Note how the artist drew the perspective of the painting
from the viewpoint of a taller adult as indicated by the childs
direct upward gaze to the viewer. In 1841 France adopted its
first child labor laws. However it wass not until 1890 before all
of Europe and had stronger child labor laws in place.
(Left) Fillette
Portant un Panier
1891
Berthe Morisot
(Love her work)
(Right)
La Boxe
1918 Maurice
Denis
Note how the artist captured the
the uncoordinated
movement of the
children
Petit Cireur de bottes a Londres 1882
Jules Bastien-Lepage
The Musée National du Moyen Âge, formerly Musée de Cluny
Officially known as the Musée national du Moyen Âge –
Thermes et hôtel de Cluny ("National Museum of the Middle
Ages – Cluny thermal baths and mansion"), is a museum in
Paris, France. It is located in the 5th arrondissement at 6 Place
Paul-Painlevé, south of the Boulevard Saint-Germain, between the Boulevard Saint-Michel and the Rue Saint-Jacques.
Among the principal holdings of the museum are the six The
Lady and the Unicorn (La Dame à la licorne) tapestries.
The structure is perhaps the most outstanding example still
extant of civic architecture in medieval Paris. It was formerly
the town house (hôtel) of the abbots of Cluny, started in 1334.
The structure was rebuilt by Jacques d'Amboise, abbot in
commendam of Cluny 1485–1510; it combines Gothic and
Renaissance elements. In 1843, it was made into a public museum, to hold relics of France's Gothic past preserved in the
building by Alexandre du Sommerard.
Though it no longer possesses anything originally connected
with the abbey of Cluny, the hôtel was at first part of a larger
Cluniac complex that also included a building (no longer
standing) for a religious college in the Place de la Sorbonne,
just south of the present day Hôtel de Cluny along Boulevard Saint-Michel. Although originally intended for the use
of the Cluny abbots, the residence was taken over by Jacques
d'Amboise, Bishop of Clermont and Abbot of Jumièges,
and rebuilt to its
present form in the
period of 1485-1500.
Occupants of the
house over the years
have included Mary
Tudor, the sister of Henry VIII of England. She resided here in 1515 after
the death of her husband Louis XII, whose successor, Francis I, kept her
under surveillance, particularly to see if she was pregnant. Seventeenthcentury occupants included several papal nuncios, including Mazarin.
In the 18th century, the tower of the Hôtel de Cluny was used as an observatory by the astronomer Charles Messier who, in 1771, published his
observations in the landmark Messier catalog. In 1789, the hôtel was confiscated by the state, and for the next three decades served several functions. At one point, it was owned by a physician who used the magnificent
Flamboyant chapel on the first floor as a dissection room.
In 1833, Alexandre du
Sommerard bought
the Hôtel de Cluny
and installed his large
collection of medieval
and Renaissance objects. Upon his death
in 1842, the collection
was purchased by the
state; the building was
opened as a museum
in 1843, with Sommerard's son serving
as its first curator.
The present-day gardens, opened in 1971, include a "forêt de la licorne"
inspired by the tapestries.
Vestiges of Gallo-Roman Baths
The Hôtel de Cluny is partially constructed on the remnants of the third
century Gallo-Roman baths (known as the Thermes de Cluny), famous
in their own right, and which may be visited. In fact, the museum itself
actually consists of two buildings: the frigidarium ("cooling room"),
where the vestiges of the Thermes de Cluny are, and the Hôtel de Cluny
itself, which houses its impressive collections.
The Musée de Cluny houses a variety of important medieval artifacts, in
particular its tapestry collection, which includes the fifteenth
century tapestry cycle La Dame à la Licorne.
Other notable works stored there include early medieval
sculptures from the seventh and eighth centuries, and works
of gold, ivory, antique furnishings, stained glass, and illuminated manuscripts.
The visit begins on the Boulevard Saint-Michel, where even
before entering the museum, you can admire the vestiges of
Gallo-Roman baths. Fast-forward 14 centuries and find yourself in the superb courtyard of the Hôtel de Cluny, built at the
end of the 15th century. The museum’s collections include art
from antiquity to Renaissance times and feature some veritable masterpieces, including the Pilier des Nautes from the
1st century, and the six tapestries that make up La Dame à la
Licorne (The Lady with the Unicorn), dating from the 15th century.
La Dame à la licorne
The six tapestries depict a slender, blond woman in a Mediterranean garden with a unicorn and a lion on either side. They
were woven in Flanders in the early 1500s by unknown artisans
— most likely at the behest of a wealthy family in Paris, but
their subject remains mysterious. Along with the Unicorn Tapestries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Cloisters, they are
considered some of the finest examples of medieval handiwork
in the world. The six tapestries range in size from 9 by 11.8 feet
to 12 by 15 feet. The museum acquired the tapestries in 1882.
Previously, they were on view in a castle in Boussac, in central
France.
Historians believe that five of the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries are allegories of the five senses. In the new installation,
they are hung in a dim, square room, progressing clockwise
from the most
earthly of the senses to the most heavenly: touch (in which the
woman holds the unicorn’s horn and a flag); taste (in which the
woman feeds a bird); smell (in which she holds flowers); hearing
(in which she plays music); sight (in which she shows the unicorn his reflection in a mirror). Finally, the sixth tapestry includes text that reads, “A mon seul désir,” or “To my only desire.”
It depicts the woman inside the parting folds of a tent, held open
by the unicorn and the lion. Some historians believe it represents
the heart, the sixth and innermost sense.
“Part of the fascination is that you can have several interpretations,” the director of the museum, Elisabeth Taburet-Delahaye,
said in an interview this week. She added that the mystery over
who wove the tapestries and whom they depict had made the
Lady and the Unicorn a “kind of Mona Lisa” of the Middle Ages.