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.
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| Street view of the Petit Palais |
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| Entry |
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| Half the grand hall |
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| Other half |
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| Gorgeous floor |
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| Even in the little elevator |
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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 |
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| Thus |
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| And thus |
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| And thus |
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| Glorification of French art is one of the subjects |
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| Thus |
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| Looking out to the jardin where we had a pique-nique |
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| Thus |
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| Cupola from the garden |
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| Great grill work |
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| Thus |
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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; |
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| Steinlen's 14 juillet |
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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 |
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Emile Galle Vase, 1898; should have been in the Paris 1900
exhibit |
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| Across the street, the Grand Palais...next time |
