David Decides to Visit a Museum

I've been here for over three months and hadn't stepped into a single museum in Paris (Lynna went to the Rodin Museum with our friends Chris and Emmet), until this past Thursday. While Anabel watched Emmett in the afternoon, Lynna and I visited the Musée d'Orsay, a museum which houses some of the most amazing Impressionist paintings and sculptures from the 19th century.

I (David) really haven't felt the need to visit any museums since on our previous trips to Paris in 2001, 2002 and 2003, we visited many of the museums multiple times and several of them are still pretty fresh in my memory. But nevertheless, no stay in Paris is complete without a visit to the beautiful d'Orsay, housed in a former train station, so off we went.

There were a few new things in the museum since I last visited it including a current exhibiton that contained this strange contemporary art display with a wheeled fruit stand and plastic oranges and lemons along with two of Van Gogh's self portraits. Apparently, it's some sort of post-historic tryptic. Go figure.

As usual, Lynna got herself the audio tour so she could maximize her museum-going experience. I wandered around the museum and managed to snap a few pictures of some of my favorite paintings (sans flash of course).

The first one is Monet's Gare Saint-Lazare, an absolutely amazing piece of work and this picture doesn't do it justice at all. When you approach this painting up close, it's hard to believe that it's a painting of anything discernible--it's rough and the colors and shapes all seem to blend in a very haphazard fashion; but as you step back, you get a very clear impression of the Saint Lazare train station, the bustle of the people waiting for the trains and the movement of an actual train into the station. It's a truly stunning piece of work.

The second piece that I really like is one of Van Gogh's final paintings before his apparent suicide. The piece is called L'église d'Auvers-sur-Oise, vue du chevet (The Church in Auvers-sur-Oise, View from the Chevet). It's a haunting painting of a church with an ominous dark blue sky. The road in front of the church forks to the left and the right, both seeming to disappear behind the church. For me, this painting seems to represent the turbulence and confusion in Van Gogh's final months. It's eerie and beautiful at the same time.

I also managed to snap a picture of Lynna with one of Monet's famous Water Lilies paintings. One memorable picture that I took of Lynna during our honeymoon in October 2001 was of her in front of a sculpture of a white polar bear, listening to her audio tour guide. Since she got the audio tour again this time, we thought it'd be fun to take the same picture.

Here are the 2001 and 2005 versions: