Elsien's Traveblogue

Paris, Friday 12th February 2010
At last the turn of the Musee d'Orsay, with all its Impressionist wonders. My studies at the moment tend to centre around Renaissance, no Impressionists involved at all, so this visit was pure pleasure, no duty!
However, I did go and find some of the paintings I'd had to study in previous years. It's always a surprise when you see these works 'for real', rather than in reproductions. The one Berthe Morissot I found was one I'd written about last year and I was amazed how small it was and how much greener than in the picture I'd used. The Courbet paintings were vastly bigger though and quite threatening, especially the Burial at Ornans. The room with the Van Goghs and Gauguins was too crowded but as I have a ticket for a lecture and exhibition of Van Gogh at the Royal Academy for 5th March,I'll wait! The Manet and Renoir women are absolutely luminous: Olympia, Le Dejeuner sur l'Herbe and Le Bal du Moulin de la Galette. Also found an astonishing early Degas painting of the most amazingly stiff bourgeois family Belelli, very unlike any of his other paintings.
The sun came out when I left the museum and Paris looked lovely again. Off to pick up my clean washing and do some shopping – I've deserved a beer as well, I think! J. is coming the weekend from Brussels, for Valentine's Day – well-timed! so I'll have better things to do than write a blog! Back on Wednesday!