The Museé D’Orsay, Paris

 

Claude Monet, “Impression, Sunrise” (1872)

At the museum today, the major special exhibition was "Paris 1874 Inventer l'impressionnisme." As always at this museum it was overwhelming from beginning (an overview of the very low contemporary reputation of the group of artists eventually known as impressionists) to end (a summary, with many of the original paintings of the later exhibits by this increasingly well-regarded group). While the term “impressionism” was invented after the 1874 exhibit, it plays a huge role in understanding the art and artists, as especially illustrated by Monet’s iconic painting. 

The original 1874 exhibit by the upcoming impressionists was a rebellion against the official “Salon” where the then-conventional artists displayed a professional jury-selected collection of a large number of art works. In contrast to these works, the novelty and huge imagination of the rebel group was very well highlighted by the organizers of today’s exposition. An entire room displayed a number of works that were shown in the Salon of 1874. These now mainly look so dated that it’s almost comic, though at the time the artists took themselves extremely seriously.

The permanent collections of the museum are also fabulous,
as is the building itself — a repurposed rail station — with an incredible clock.
The clock is now the dramatic feature of a dining room (we did not eat there).

The Orsay permanent collection of impressionist and post-impressionist works includes a large number of very famous paintings by Monet, Berthe Morisot, Van Gogh, Renoir, Gustave Caillebotte, and others. I’ve seen them many times in the past and never tire of them. A few in-museum photots:

In the main hall the vast arched roof is an echo of the original rail station.

From a window: a view of roofs and the distant Eiffel Tower.

Images of the Seine

Renoir: "The Luncheon of the Boating Party" (Déjeuner des Canotiers). 

Renoir's famous friends drinking wine at a popular outdoor restaurant “La Maison Fournaise,” after boating on the Seine.

Sciolino points out that the restaurant still exists: you could eat on this terrace near the river!

As I read Elaine Sciolino's book The Seine, The River That Made Paris, I've been enjoying photos and images that she mentioned. The book includes a number of photos, but many of her chapters refer to other scenes as well, and I found some of them online. It's a very visual book!

The first photo below was taken during my most recent visit to Paris, a few short months before the April, 2019 fire that destroyed Notre Dame Cathedral. Sciolino points out that firefighters relied on water pumped from the Seine to fight the fire, and prevent even more destruction!

After that, I've included several historical photos, art works, and other images that were discussed in the book. I'm using Sciolino's text as a source of ideas for finding images; I’m not writing a real review.

A view of the Seine, November, 2018.

Historic Photos of the Seine

Emile Zola's hobby was photography: here is his view of the Seine around 1900.

Quai des Grands Augustins by Eugene Atget, 1920

Charles Nègre, 1855. Quai D'Anjou. Nègre is one of the earliest photographers of the city.

Charles Nègre, 1855. Construction of the bridge d'Arcole.

After describing the Seine as it flows through Paris, Sciolino continues towards the mouth of the river.
As shown here, Rouen, also on the Seine, was badly bombed during World War II,  especially the bridges. (source)

Bouquinistes and Bathers Along the River in Paris, 21st Century

"The BOUQUINISTES are the literary gatekeepers of Paris."
(Photo from Elaine Sciolino, The Seine: The River that Made Paris, p. 201).

“Bathers sunning themselves on the Right Bank of the Seine near the Pont de Sully and the Île Saint-Louis” (The Seine, p. 11)

At the mouth of the river

We paid a very brief visit to this small and picturesque seaport in 1976. The Seine here rises and falls with the tides: evidently we were there at low tide.

Inspector Maigret: Always Near the River

More Images of the Seine

Visiting Seurat's painting "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" 
at the Chicago Art Institute, 2017. La Grande Jatte is an island in the Seine.

Claude Monet: The Break-up of the Ice on the Seine, 1880. Monet painted the river very often.
This painting is very familiar to me because it belongs to the University of Michigan Museum of Art.

The Louvre beside the Seine, long before the elaborate creation of stone riverbanks. 
From the "Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry," 1412-1416.

Paris in 1553: a map by Olivier Truschet and Germain Hoyau. (Wikipedia)

The Seine in Paris in the seventeenth century. (Wikipedia)

Blog post and original photos © 1976, 2018, 2023 mae sander

Drinking Water in Art

A woman drawing water from a well
from De Universo by Rabano Mauro, 1023

Diego Velázquez, "The Waterseller of Seville," 1620.

Jean Siméon Chardin, "Water Glass and Jug," 1760.

Francisco Goya, "The Water Carrier," 1812.

Katsukawa Shunkō, "Three Water Carriers at the Shore." Around 1800.

Utagawa Kuniyoshi, "The Maidservant Hatsu-Jo Drinking Water," 1841-1842.

Pierre-August Renoir, detail from “The Luncheon of the Boating Party,” 1880-1881.

Henri Matisse, "Still Life with Lemon" (Nature morte au citron), 1917.

Diego Rivera, detail from murals at Detroit Institute of Arts, 1932-1933.

Pablo Picasso, “Glass and Pitcher,” 1944.

Roy Lichtenstein, "Still Life with Lemon & Glass," 1974

Street Art from Philadelphia's "Drink More Tap" campaign, 2021. (Source)

Last week, I wrote about how pure drinking water is essential, but often ignored, in modern life, and how millions of people in the world lack access to this necessity. See my post: “Water: a Privilege.”  Writing about drinking water made me curious about how it’s been represented in art in various eras: as I searched for these images I found it much easier to locate art works about wine than about water! I’m sharing this with Sami’s blog where art in the form of murals is celebrated, and with Elizabeth’s weekly celebration of beverages.

Blog post © mae sander; art from Wikipedia and other collections.

Simenon's Inspector Maigret

It’s reported that Alfred Hitchcock once telephoned Simenon only to be told that he was incommunicado as he had just begun a new novel. 'That’s all right,' said Hitchcock, 'I’ll wait.' (How Georges Simenon reinvented the detective novel)

In 1931, Georges Simenon (1903-1989) published the first eleven of his still-popular detective novels featuring Inspector Jules Maigret of the Paris police. Simenon was an incredibly fast writer! He kept up an amazing writing speed for around 40 years; he wrote 75 Maigret novels, plus many others. Since 2016, Penguin Books has been publishing new translations of the Maigret books, and this week, I read two of these -- they are both rather short and read very quickly. Maigret at the Crossroads is the seventh in the series; The Two-Penny Bar, which has been translated under various other names, is the eleventh. In the past, I've read various others, including some in French.

Maigret at the Crossroads (La Nuit du Carrefour)

Original Cover, 1931.

Maigret is called to a small crossroads location outside Paris, where a mysterious homicide has occurred. The small road through the town is busy night and day with trucks bringing produce to Les Halles, the central market of Paris. I loved the constricted atmosphere of the location with only three houses, and how isolated it was -- including the local busybody. 

Many things are different now than they were then, including produce farming and shipping, truck maintenance, trucker culture, produce delivery to Paris, and many more areas of life and technology that play a role in the stories. One example is telephone service: while investigating in one of the houses, Maigret makes a call on a telephone that has to be cranked. Later, he needs to make another call to summon a police search for a fugitive, but learns that phones in that area do not function between noon and 2:30 PM.  

The Maigret books are famous for food descriptions, and many are here. Madame Maigret, who barely appears in this book, cooks a ragout. There are several mentions of veal escalopes. A few quotes show how Simenon used food and domestic details to set the atmosphere around the suspicious people he was investigating:

"The place was worse than cluttered. It was sordid. A spirit stove encrusted with boiled milk, sauces, grease, on a table covered with a scrap of oilcloth. Tag ends of bread. The remains of an escalope in a frying pan sitting right on the table and dirty dishes in the sink."

"The inn at Avrainville was empty. A zinc counter, a few bottles, a big stove, a small billiard table with rock-hard cushions and torn felt, a dog and cat lying side by side … The proprietor was the waiter; his wife could be seen in the kitchen, cooking escalopes."

At a different inn: "Maigret went into the kitchen, where the innkeeper’s wife was preparing the evening meal. He cut himself a thick hunk of bread, moved on to a terrine of pâté, and asked for a mug of white wine."

Or the behavior of some of the criminals in Paris, described by a witness: "They start drinking champagne, having a gay old time. Then they order crayfish, onion soup, what have you, a real blowout, like those people get up to: yelling, slapping their thighs, belting out a little song now and then …"

Note: the Kindle edition of this book has no page numbers. 

Maigret watches the suspects until he forms a theory about what they were doing and why they killed the person whose body was found at the beginning. It's fascinating to read about how he observes and deducts, as well as to read the minutiae of life in this past time.

The famous director Jean Renoir made Maigret at the Crossroads  into a film in 1932 (IMDB). I don't think it's available to watch now though it would be fun!

The Two-Penny Bar (La Guinguette a deux sous)

Original Cover, 1931.

Maigret and his colleagues are interviewing a condemned man on the day before he is to be executed, and he describes a crime that took place some time ago, which had been unknown to the police. In fact, he had been blackmailing a murderer, who was never suspected. The convict doesn't give much detail: he's just teasing the police, which doesn't surprise them. 

The convict is executed (no details given), and Maigret begins to search for the only specific place or person the convict had mentioned: a bar informally called the two-penny bar. It turns out to be in a weekend entertainment area where upper class people have homes on the Seine around 20 miles from central Paris for weekend gatherings and entertainment. To try to identify the murderer, Maigret joins the set of weekend drinkers and idlers who hang out at this bar, which was in a small white building near the river:

"The bistro was at the back. It was a large lean-to with one wall completely open to the garden. Tables and benches, a bar, a mechanical piano and some Chinese lanterns. Some bargees were drinking at the bar. A girl of about twelve was keeping an eye on the piano, occasionally rewinding it and slipping two sous into the slot. ... The old woman from the bistro waited at the tables herself, anxious that the food was going down well – salami, then an omelette, then rabbit – but no one cared much." (pp 18-19).

Drinking plays a big role in this novel, as Maigret constantly drinks with a person that he expects to be a useful informant, and with the other suspects. He drinks Vouvray, Pernod (a "cloudy aperitif"), brandy, liqueurs, and beer. He's often described as being somewhat drunk, but it doesn't seem to stop his skills at putting together the relationships of all the prospective criminals and obtaining confessions about who was responsible for the murders that he's been investigating throughout the book. 

Electricity hadn't yet reached every house in France. For example, searching for a fugitive, Maigret enters a house in a village:

"‘Could we have some light?’ Maigret asked the old woman. 

"‘I’ll have to see if there’s any oil in the lamp,’ she replied tartly. 

"It turned out that there was. The glass was replaced with a clink, the wick began first to smoke, then to burn with a yellow flame that gradually filled the corners of the room with light. It was quite hot inside the house. A smell of the countryside, of poverty." (pp. 123-124). 

Many details in the novel really highlight how Paris has changed in the past 90 years. The descriptions of the streets, the apartments, and the inhabitants of poorer quarters of Paris is vivid and interesting. I was intrigued by Simenon's descriptions of the Jewish quarter in the Marais district of Paris, where some of the crime takes place. 

Simenon and Antisemitism

The Jewish characters in both the novels I read are stereotyped in offensive ways. Curious about this, I looked up the topic of Simenon and antisemitism. Evidently there are even more severe instances of caricature and racism in his other works. In one recent essay, I read:

"Time and again, Simenon employs stock caricatures of Jews to arouse suspicion and disgust in his readers. One Simenon scholar finds Jews in 13 Maigret novels, an inexplicably high ratio. Two of Maigret’s Jews are murderers. None is sympathetic.

"Simenon has form on the far right. A wartime collaborator with the Nazi occupation, he fled to North America in 1945 and stayed abroad for a decade. In France, a judicial order banned him from publishing for five years. He was, and remains, suspect." (Detecting a nasty side to Maigret, 2013)

A New York Times review of Pierre Assouline's definitive book Simenon: A Biography described how Simenon and his family stayed in Paris after the Nazi occupation:

"Their stay in France lasted through World War II, when Simenon, exhibiting the careless anti-Semitism so deeply ingrained in much of European society, prospered by becoming, Assouline writes, 'not a man of commitment, but an opportunist.' He submitted his novels to German censors, and his films were made in active collaboration with Vichy officials. He became enormously wealthy." (The Maigret Machine, 1997)

I've been reading the Maigret books for a long time, but I don't remember being aware of the author's racist attitudes. Perhaps the books that remained in print before the re-issue of the complete set of 75 Maigret novels were chosen to be the less offensive ones, and perhaps I simply did not pay attention. I definitely see why they've been popular for such a long time despite this deep flaw.

From 1930: a wine ad that to me captures the look of those times.
Shared with Paris in July 2022 -- where lots of people are reading Simenon!

Blog post © 2022 mae sander.

"Luncheon of the Boating Party"

Renoir Self-Portrait, 1875.

Susan Vreeland's novel Luncheon of the Boating Party is a fictional account of how Pierre-Auguste Renoir created his very famous and much-loved painting of the same name. Fourteen faces appear in the painting of a beautiful luncheon outdoors at a restaurant along the Seine River in what was then the more rural part of Paris (now enveloped in the much larger city). All these figures (except one mystery face) have been identified: they were friends and acquaintances of Renoir. The painter did not include a self-portrait in this masterpiece, but I have included one that he painted in 1875, a few years before he painted the boating party.

Vreeland has woven a complex and highly enjoyable story of his relationships with this group, telling much about who they were and how they lived. Fortunately, a Wikipedia article has called them out with thumbnails of their faces from the painting, and I've selected a few favorites out of the fourteen faces in the painting, which I'll introduce to you here, while trying to give an idea of what's in the book:

 Louise-Alphonsine Fournaise – the girl leaning on the railing – was the daughter of the family that owned the water-side restaurant where Renoir's luncheon – and much of the action of Vreeland's book – took place. She worked in the restaurant, helping her mother who was the cook and helping her father with the customers. She was a remarkably self-educated woman, who knew about art and who encouraged Renoir's difficult task of painting a huge multi-person portrait outdoors from life: a very complex endeavor.

We often see her in connection with the food served in the restaurant, for example,

"Alphonsine brought up a plate of green beans, fried potatoes, and grenouilles, frog legs sautéed with garlic and parsley, a common dish here because frogs in marshy areas jumped right into your hand." (p. 22). 

"The main course was canard à la paysanne, braised duck garnished with carrots, turnips, onions, celery, bacon, and fried potatoes. Auguste didn’t know how he could sit still and eat. He was conscious only of the painting moving before his eyes. Conversations separated, blended, jumped from one topic to another. He didn’t follow them. Alphonsine brought out two large raspberry tarts. The light on her raised cheeks issued from within. She cut generous pieces, and lingered by the railing watching intently as each person took a bite. 'Did you make these?' Auguste asked. 'With a little help from the sun and rain.'" (p. 98).  

"She was amused by her mother announcing the entrées as she and Maman set the platters on the table. 'Pâté maison and asperges d’Argenteuil en conserve. The best quality in France, grown less than five kilometers from here. 'Pretty as a picture, madame,' Charles said and helped himself to quite a few spears. 'I love asparagus so much I had Manet paint them for my dining room, as a hint to my cook to prepare them more often.'" (p. 158).

Aline Charigot – shown with her little dog – was a beautiful but uneducated and nearly illiterate young woman. She appears in Renoir's neighborhood when he stops for a coffee:

"La Crémerie de Camille was crowded with young women chatting over their café au lait before heading to work at milliners’ shops or dressmakers’ lofts or laundries. Auguste greeted Aline, a seamstress with a Burgundian accent and a creamy complexion, and Géraldine, a pork butcher’s assistant with a meaty fragrance but with a silk rosebud pinned to her gray frock." (p. 59). 

Although Aline was not among the original subjects for the painting, once she's made part of it her importance becomes very obvious. Renoir begins to adore her and he has to convince her protective and untrusting mother to let her pose every Sunday at the boathouse.

Among other things, he tempts her with the fine meals they eat before each sitting for his painting:

“Every Sunday we have one of Mère Fournaise’s delicious meals. So far we’ve had canard à la paysanne with artichauts à la vinaigrette, poulet forestière with asperges d’Argenteuil en conserve, lapin en gibelotte, friture d’ablettes, de gardons et de goujons.' 'Mm. The duck must have been nice, but I’m sorry I missed the rabbit stew. It reminds me of home.' 'And for dessert, raspberry tarts and apple pastry.'"  (p. 260). 

At the end of the novel, one learns that soon after the painting was finished Aline began to live with Renoir. She married him after 10 years of living with him, and was the mother of his children.

Gustave Caillebotte was a very rich art collector, patron, and a highly original painter. He was very much a part of the boating party because he was also such an avid boat owner and boat racer. Part of the suspense – will Renoir be able to finish the painting? – is due to an upcoming boat race, which will require all the space on the restaurant terrace and thus disable Renoir's project. Caillebotte and his boats were very much involved in this race!

Caillebotte is famous today because he sponsored and subsidized the Impressionists while also painting in their style, and his collection and vision was critical in creating their long-term reputation. The circle included Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, Paul Cézanne, Berthe Morisot, and a few others.

Paul Lhôte was another associate who supported Renoir's project. One of his friends describes him:

“Paul Lhôte. A loose screw. Hungry for experiences. Reckless. A writer of articles and an amateur painter. He escapes his deadly conventional post at a shipping company by collecting unconventional adventures.” “Such as?” “Stowing away to South America on a packet ship. He lost his post for that escapade, so he immediately stowed away to Asia. On the isle of Jersey once he dared me to dive from a high cliff out over the rocks into furious waves. I thought he was crazy, but he did it, bare-assed, and came up laughing.” (p. 96).

Charles Ephrussi – the man with a top hat – was a wealthy art collector, and member of the circle of friends of Renoir and other Impressionists. The Ephrussi family is the subject of the book The Hare With Amber Eyes, which I wrote about here and here.

One of the other members of the boating party characterized him thus:

“Charles Ephrussi, only son in a line of wealthy Russian bankers. Self-taught art connoisseur who buys and sells profitably. He’s tapped his ebony walking stick on the marble floors of every bank on rue Lafitte....Always razor-sharp creases in his trousers. Always dignified, the true flâneur strolling the boulevards, observing, then retreating to his plush study to write esoteric articles about his observations while snacking on caviar on toasted rye. But here, ha! A fish out of water. Wait till he discovers that he’ll be posing with two sweaty men in singlets, undergarments to him, one with the air of a carefree sailor, the other as brawny as a pirate.” (p. 155).

An additional description of Ephrussi's palatial home and art collection:

"Even Ephrussi’s outer office was redolent with sandalwood incense, the exotic aroma of his past as the heir of a corn-exporting dynasty in Odessa. Although Japanese prints adorned the anteroom, Auguste knew he’d find paintings by his friends in Ephrussi’s private office." (p. 142). 

Vreeland's description discretely omits a fact about Charles Ephrussi that would have surely been quite important in Renoir's time: the Ephrussi family were not just Russian bankers, but were Jewish. Everyone would have been aware of this, as antisemitism was a critical factor in France during the final years of the 19th century. The closest Vreeland comes to mentioning Jewishness is in a quote about Pissarro, who was also Jewish: “Pissarro has no use for Degas because Edgar’s an anti-Semite." (p. 70).

How accurate was Vreeland's narrative?

Somehow Vreeland brings all fourteen characters together every Sunday when it's possible for Renoir to paint them, and describes all the complications of getting such a crowd to pose for an unimaginably complex group portrait painted entirely live, never in a studio. What a book!

Vreeland's magnificent descriptions are perfectly integrated into the action and the amazingly fast-moving plot and interactions among the characters. She provides a wealth of detail about the food, the lives of actresses and women of the demi-monde as well as of the artists and the working class people they know, the rivalries and arguments within the Impressionist group, the exact names and costs of the pigments that Renoir needed for his painting, the poverty suffered by most of the group, and a wide variety of other topics.

Evidently, Vreeland did a substantial research to make it accurate. She wrote:

"My research included such broad topics as the history of the nineteenth century in France, French society and culture, as well as such specific topics as the Franco-Prussian War, the Siege of Paris, and the Commune; the changes in the marketing of art from the Salon to independent galleries, along with the famous art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel; the practice of the duel; dressmaking and couture of late-nineteenth-century Paris; Baron Haussmann’s sweeping changes in the look of Paris streets and squares, Montmartre, and quarters where Gustave Caillebotte, Charles Ephrussi, and Madame Charpentier lived; operas current at the time, cabarets and cabaret songs and singers, dance halls and dances, cafés; canotage, the new leisure of boating, styles of rowing craft, the specifics of river jousting, the organization of sailing regattas; transportation and currency; oil paints available at the time, art-supply dealers, color theory, Renoir’s palette and his preferred types of brushes; other painters who figure in the novel, Monet, Cézanne, Caillebotte, Degas, Bazille, Sisley; the tension among the Impressionist painters and the eventual break up of the group; publications popular at the time; the French character, gender roles, and early feminism." (source)

Earlier this week, I posted a set of Renoir paintings that relate to the famous Luncheon of the Boating Party (here).  This review is copyright © 2020 by mae sander. Images are as credited.

Renoir’s Tea Drinkers

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) was one of the most famous of the Impressionist painters in Paris in the late 19th century. Everyone is familiar with his most famous paintings, especially several variations showing two young girls playing a piano. A generation ago a reproduction of one of these variations hung in a large number of homes, often above the family piano. Today you can see one of his original versions at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris.

Another of Renoir's most famous works, Luncheon of the Boating Party, is the subject of a very enjoyable book of the same name by Susan Vreeland, published in 2007. I've been reading it this week, and finding it very fascinating and full of wonderful details about Renoir and his friends, who were also very accomplished painters, art collectors, and writers.

The Luncheon of the Boating Party (Déjeuner des Canotiers). Philips Collection, Washington, DC.

One very striking feature of Renoir's painting is the wonderfully disarrayed table where the people in the painting have been eating lunch and drinking wine. I started to think about how often Renoir painted food and drink, and did some searching for more paintings where he depicted wine, tea, coffee, and more. I found many still-life paintings and scenes of people enjoying various beverages. Here are a few of these Renoirs:

Cup of Chocolate, 1914. Barnes Collection.

Oranges, Bananas, and Teacup, 1908, Barnes Foundation.

Lemons and Teacup, 1912
The McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas. Wikimedia Commons.

The Cup of Tea. 1906-1907. WikiArt.

La Fin du Déjuner, 1879. Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt, Germany

Tea Time, 1911, Barnes Foundation.

Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette. 1876. Wikiart.

When I finish reading Vreeland's historic fiction, where she researched and imagined how Renoir painted the boating party, I'll write a review of the book. (UPDATE: done here) Today, however, I wanted to share these images with two blog parties: the Tuesday tea party at Altered Book Lover, and the August extension of Paris in July at the blog Thyme for Tea. This post is copyright © 2020 by mae sander; images of Renoir paintings are as credited.