d'Orsay something

This post won't have much text. Mainly I want it as a souvenir from our visit to the Musée d'Orsay. Housed in an old railway station, it has a simply incredible collection, especially if you like impressionists. I put at the top one of my favorite paintings from museum, which we encountered near the end, by Léon Belly called "Pèlerins Allant à la Mecque" (Pilgrims Going to Mecca). The painting is very large (something like 8 feet by 5 feet), and the way the caravan comes at you, and the detail of every traveler, it pulls you in. I was happy looking at it for quite a while.

But I should note one thing from our way to the museum. As we walked along the Seine, I saw a statue and called out to the kids: "Hey kids guess who that is!" and they answered dutifully, "John Stuart Mill!" But actually it wasn't John Stuart Mill. It was Thomas Jefferson.

Last time we saw a Thomas Jefferson statue was at his memorial in Washington, DC. It always leads to a good discussion between Abby and me about how to evaluate his life's contributions. He was such a remarkably gifted person, and had good instincts on many issues for his time, and yet his failings on slavery are all the worse because he seemed to recognize the evils of the system. As a boy, I developed an attachment to Jefferson, and so Abby does well to emphasize the negative parts of his story. One thing I have always liked about Jefferson is that he edited a version of the Gospels, keeping in all the good moral teachings but cutting out all of the metaphysical commitments, to reveal Jesus as just a moral teacher and not as the son of God. He also recognized the need for a separation of Church and State.

Having mentioned Jefferson, it might also be worth mentioning one other thing here: Hamilton the Musical. We have yet to see it, and are excited to visit Chicago to see it when we return to the States. Charlotte especially has learned the songs backward and forward, and we all admire Lin Manuel Miranda. But I have a pet peeve about it: in praising the musical, some people suggest that Alexander Hamilton was under-appreciated before it came out. But I would suggest that being one of one 6 founding fathers that most people can name (Franklin, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Hamilton), and having your face on the $10 bill, and having political science students across the country read the Federalist papers every year, and having many streets and buildings and a college named after you, means you are not some poor underappreciated soul. If the point is that most Americans couldn't tell you anything substantive about Hamilton before this, then the truth is that most Americans couldn't tell you anything substantive about any of the 6 I just named beyond the most obvious few facts (like that Washington was the first president). All these founders made important contributions (and had significant failings). Let's just enjoy the musical as a work of art and a good story, and not pretend that it is a ground-breaking piece of historical scholarship.

Back to Paris. We arrived at the Musée d'Orsay relatively early, and we were not disappointed to have a nice long time to take it in.

     

The ground floor has a lot of sculpture and some large paintings, like the following representation of the fall of the Roman Empire. That's how it happened, folks.

More weird, mythological creatures.

And Rodin's marvelous "Gates of Hell"...

...where you'll note the Thinker is just hanging out unperturbed.

But then we moved onto some of the painting exhibit areas. You'll see that Cyrus continued his project of getting photographed with great art. Some nice bright colors:

  

And some van Gogh, including his less famous Starry Night (there are two):

  

Degas:

We then stopped at the beautifully situated museum cafe for a snack.

Then back to exploring paintings. This next one was one of Charlotte's favorites, and she purchased a card stock poster version of it at the end.

I think this next one is Bathers by Cézanne. I believe Cy and I saw a sketch version of it in Basel when we attended a Cezanne exhibition there.

A few more highlights. Maybe when I have time I will go back and put in all the titles and artists.

    

(Abby and I both really loved that one just above.)

A quick scroll through a blog post can't quite capture the hours we spent there happily taking it in. So many interesting paintings. We left full of appreciation but also ready for lunch.