Le Petit Palais

Although we've walked by or near both the Petit and Grand Palaces many times, we've never visited them. This year, the Paris 1900: La Ville Spectacle exhibit--one of the best ever of any sort we've seen--drew us into the Petit Palais, and after several hours savoring the extraordinary collection of Muchas, Guimards, Laliques, Rodins, Toulouse-Lautrecs, and others, we took just a little time to explore the Petit Palais. It was built as an exposition hall for the 1900 Paris expo--a world fair, sort of--and is now one of the city's 14 city museums.

Street view of the Petit Palais

Entry

Half the grand hall

Other half

Gorgeous floor

Even in the little elevator

The ceiling frescoes are eye-catching; and reminded me of
nothing so much as Mucha's Slav Epic paintings, done decades
later...style, scale, patriotic/heroic subject...hmmm

Thus

And thus

And thus

Glorification of French art is one of the subjects

Thus

Looking out to the jardin where we had a pique-nique

Thus

Cupola from the garden

Great grill work

Thus

Le Petit Palais' collection of art is major and would put any lesser city on the
world-class list (not to mention the building); L'hermitte, Les Halles, 1895;

Steinlen's 14 juillet

Courbet's 1866 Le Sommeil (The Sleep); his 1866 Origin of the World was not 
publicly exhibited until 1988; the greatest of realists, hero to Manet and then 
the Impressionists, anarchist and a leader of the Commune, he penned his own
epitaph as he left for exile in Switzerland: "He belonged to no scholl, to no
church, to no institution, to no academy, least of all to any regime except the
regime of liberty"; gotta' like this guy 

Emile Galle Vase, 1898; should have been in the Paris 1900
exhibit

Across the street, the Grand Palais...next time