Page 150 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Paris

148  P ARIS AREA B Y AREA

Exploring the Musée d’Orsay the many bronzes on show
were made from wax sculptures
The Musée d’Orsay picks up where the Louvre ends, showing found in his studio after his
a variety of art forms from 1848 to 1914. Its star attraction death. In contrast, the sculpture
is a superb collection of Impressionist art, which includes of Auguste Rodin was very
famous works by Monet, Renoir, Manet and Degas as well much in the public eye, and his
sensuous and forceful work
as Neo-Impressionist works by pointillist Georges Seurat makes him pre-eminent among
and Post-Impressionist works by Gauguin and Van Gogh. 19th-century sculptors. The
The museum also holds world-class temporary exhibitions museum contains many of his
and excellent lunchtime and evening concerts. works, including the original
plaster of Balzac (1897). Rodin’s
talented companion, Camille
its proliferation of allegorical Claudel, who spent much of her
seated female nudes, bronze life in an asylum, is represented
palm fronds and severed by a grim allegory of mortality,
bearded heads. Maturity (1899 –1903).
The turn of the 20th century
Sculpture is marked by the work of
Emile-Antoine Bourdelle and
The museum’s central aisle Aristide Maillol.
overflows with an oddly
assorted selection of sculp tures. Painting Before 1880
These illustrate the eclectic
mood around the middle of The surprising diversity of styles
the 19th century when the in 19th-century painting is
Ceiling design (1911) by the artist and Classicism of Eugène emphasized by the close
designer Maurice Denis Guillaume’s Cenotaph of the juxtaposition on the ground
Gracchi (1848 –53) co-existed floor of all paintings prior to
Art Nouveau with the Romanticism of 1870 – the crucial year in
François Rude. Rude created the which Impressionism first
The Belgian architect and relief on the Arc de Triomphe made a name for itself. The
designer Victor Horta was (1836), often referred to as La raging colour and almost
among the first to give free Marseillaise (see p213). Expressionistic vigour of
rein to the sinuous line that There is a wonderful series Eugène Delacroix’s Lion Hunt
gave Art Nouveau its French of 36 busts of members of (1854) stands next to
sobriquet of Style Nouille (noodle parliament (1832) – bloated, Jean-Dominique Ingres’ cool
style). Taking its name from a ugly, unscrupulous and self- Classical The Spring (1820–56).
gallery of modern design that important – by the satirist As a reminder of the academic
opened in Paris in 1895, Art Honoré Daumier, and manner that dominated the
Nouveau flourished through- work by the vital but century up to that point,
out Europe until World War I. short-lived genius Jean- the uninspired waxwork
In Vienna, Otto Wagner, Baptiste Carpeaux, style of Thomas Couture’s
Koloman Moser and Josef whose first major monumental The Romans in
Hoffmann combined high bronze, Count the Age of Decadence (1847)
craft with the new design, Ugolino (1862), was a dominates the central aisle.
while the School of Glasgow, character from In a class of their own are
under the impetus of Charles Dante. In 1868, he Edouard Manet’s
Rennie Mackintosh, developed produced his provocative Olympia and
a more rectilinear approach Dionysian delight, Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe
which anticipated the work The Dance, which (1863), while works
of Frank Lloyd Wright in the caused a storm painted around the
United States. of protest: it was same time by his
René Lalique introduced “an insult to friends, Claude
the aesthetics of Art Nouveau public morals”. This Monet, Pierre-
into jewellery and glassware, contrasts with the Auguste Renoir, Frédéric
while Hector Guimard, inspired derivative and mannered Bazille and Alfred Sisley,
by Horta, is most famous today work of such sculptors as give a glimpse of the
for his once-ubiquitous Art Alexandre Falguière and Impressionists before
Nouveau entrances to the Hyppolyte Moulin. the Impressionist
Paris Metro. Edgar Degas’ famous movement began.
One exhibit not to be missed Young Dancer of Fourteen
is the carved wooden bookcase (1881) was displayed Young Dancer of Fourteen
by Rupert Carabin (1890), with during his lifetime, but (1881) by Edgar Degas

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