Paris: Day 21 - Musee d'Orsay

Today we went to the Musee d'Orsay. It houses French art of the 1800's picking up where the Louvre's art collection leaves off. The Musee d'Orsay building is an old train station. Trains used to run right down the center of the gallery! Like we always do we followed Rick Steve's tour in our travel book. We saw Ingres' "The Source" and Cabanel's "The Birth of Venus." They were neat and everything but there is a LOT of nudity in this museum. I am used to it since I was an art major in college but Phil noticed it right away. Once we realized what we were looking at we proceeded to the Impressionist galleries.

The Impressionist are was so fun! (At least for me) We saw the "real" thing! Pretty cool when you have seen a painting a million times in a book. It is always so different in person. We saw Manet, Monet, Degas, Renoir, Whistler, Pissaro, and Sisley. There were a lot of Degas paintings. He did all of the paintings and sculptures of the dancers. In the Post-Impressionism area we saw Van Gogh, Cezanne, and Redon. Van Gogh's paintings were so bright and colorful. In college there was a Van Gogh/Gauguin traveling exhibit that I attended in Chicago at the art museum. It was neat to see Van Gogh's paintings again in a different setting!



Before we left the museum we made it over to the Art Nouveau area. I am glad that we did even though we walked through it very fast. There was a lot of Art Nouveau furniture on display and furniture is my favorite! There was also paintings, dishware, jewelry, and sculptures. How fun!


Luke did really well. We gave him his own map at the museum entrance and that occupied his attention for quite a while. We also discovered on the way to the museum that an actual tooth has erupted in his lower gums! Finally! There was even a little dot of blood! Poor guy. He seemed very happy the whole day though! I hope that doesn't mean trouble tonight. He is sleeping peacefully now... I wonder what he will look like with teeth? It will change his whole look. Just knowing that he has a tooth makes me feel like he is older.

Overall, a fun day for all of us! We picked up a baguette on the way home and some cheese (Coulommiers). We had salad at home that we ate with the bread and cheese. For dessert we had pistachio ice cream! Yum!


















Degas dancer













Van Gogh

























Look closely and you can see a small white tooth on the left (your right) gum!