Category: Regions

Musée de l’Orangerie

 

Musée de l’Orangerie

Musée de l’Orangerie exterior.JPG
Musée de l’Orangerie (Estb. 1852) entrance
Location – Place de la Concorde
75001 Paris, France
Access – Concorde

Website – www.musee-orangerie.fr

The Musée de l’Orangerie is an art gallery of impressionist and post-impressionist paintings located in the west corner of the Tuileries Gardens next to the Place de la Concorde in Paris. Though most famous for being the permanent home for eight Water Lilies murals by Claude Monet, the museum also contains works by Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri Rousseau, Alfred Sisley, Chaim Soutine, and Maurice Utrillo, among others.

 

Location

The gallery is on the bank of the Seine in the old orangery of the Tuileries Palace on the Place de la Concorde near the Concorde metro station.

History

 According to the museum’s website, the Orangerie was originally built in 1852 by the architect Firmin Bourgeois and completed by his successor, Ludovico Visconti, to shelter the orange trees of the garden of the Tuileries. Used by the Third Republic in the nineteenth century as deposit for goods, an examination room, and place of lodging for mobilized soldiers, it also served to house sporting, musical, and patriotic events. Additionally, it was a place to display exhibitions of industry, animals, plants, as well as rare displays of painting.
 As art historian Michel Hoog states, “In 1921, the administration of the Beaux-Arts decided to assign to the Direction des Musées Nationaux (as it was then called) the two buildings overlooking the Place de la Concorde, the Jeu de Paume, and the Orangerie, which until then had been used for their original purpose. The Orangerie became an annex of the Musée du Luxembourg, unanimously criticized for being too small, while the Jeu de Paume was to be used for temporary exhibitions and to house contemporary foreign painting.” Claude Monet had requested to donate decorative panels to the French government as a monument to the end of World War I, and former politician (and close friend of Monet) Georges Clémenceau suggested that Monet install the paintings at the newly available Orangerie (rather than at the Jeu de Paume, which had smaller wall space, or, as was formerly planned, as an annex to the Musée Rodin).

On April 12, 1922 Claude Monet signed a contract donating the Nymphéas series of decorative panels painted on canvas to the French government, to be housed in redesigned, oval rooms at the Orangerie. With input from Monet, the head architect at the Louvre, Camille Lefèvre, drafted new plans and elevations in 1922 to house Monet’s large Nymphéas canvases, incorporating natural light, plain walls, and sparse interior decoration. According to Hoog’s research, “funds were made available on August 17, 1922, work began in October and seems to have been finished in [the] following year.” Unwilling to relinquish his final works of art, these water lilies paintings stayed with Monet until his death on December 5, 1926. On January 31, 1927 the Laurent-Fournier company agreed to install and mount the panels (a process that involved gluing the canvas directly to the walls), and the paintings were in place by March 26 of that year. On May 17, 1927 Monet’s Nymphéas at the Musée de l’Orangerie opened to the public.

According to Hoog, “In August 1944, during the battle for the Liberation of Paris, five shells fell on the rooms of the Nymphéas; two panels (those situated on the wall between the two rooms) were slightly damaged and immediately restored. In 1984, this restoration work was renewed and a general cleaning was effected.”

In January 2000, the museum was closed for renovation work, completely reviewed and restructured, and re-opened to the public in May 2006.

Paul Guillaume‘s widow, Mrs. Jean Walter, donated their modern art collection to the Musées Nationaux in 1958. The Orangerie has housed the Paul Guillaume collection of 19th and 20th century modern paintings since 1965.

Monet’s Water Lilies

Claude Monet‘s Nymphéas on display in the museum.

A cycle of Monet’s water-lily paintings, known as the Nymphéas, was arranged on the ground floor of the Orangerie in 1927. They are available under direct diffused light as was originally intended by Monet. The eight paintings are displayed in two oval rooms all along the walls. The museum was closed to the public from the end of August 1999 until May 2006. For several months before it was closed there was a special exhibit of Monet’s Nymphéas that were gathered from museums throughout the world. More than 60 of the 250 paintings he made of the water lilies in his garden were included. The walls were repainted in shades of purples and violet for this special exhibit. The Orangerie was renovated in order to move the paintings to the upper floor of the gallery.

 

Art museum – Impressionist and Post-impressionist paintings

Château de Tours

 

Visuel Château de Tours

History of the castle

From TOURS – Château de Tours – official website

On the remains of wooden buildings, themselves built on the remains of Gallo-Roman baths, the Chateau de Tour’s first stones are laid in the eleventh century by order of the Counts of Anjou, relying on some vestiges of the Roman wall that surrounded Caesarodunum, the Roman settlement here.

The location is strategic. Just in front of the only bridge that allows passage  north of the Loire, and bordering the city, the building is probably an entry point for men and goods while being a few steps from the cathedral.

The castle is mainly used as a residence, but things change in the thirteenth century. It must be said that France takes shape, and Philippe-Auguste includes Touraine in this great kingdom. The castle of Tours is then enlarged to become a real defensive fortress, perhaps to resist a possible English attack, or simply to impose a little more, in the face of the growing importance of Chateauneuf and St. Martin’s Basilica.

A drawbridge gives access to the castle with its large square tower of the eleventh century, and four towers including the tower of Guise which is a dungeon with a wall thirty meters high and three metres thick, surrounding not only the inhabited building but also the chapel and a large courtyard.

The estate extends further, with new homes, a barnyard, a stable. Kings go there, the future Louis XI is married there, but in the Renaissance the competition is tough against the new castles at the edge of the water. As the defensive role decreases and in the seventeenth century the Wilson Bridge is constructed, the role of the chateau changes, serving in turn as arsenal, begging depot, military barracks, and even stone quarry to build the river’s docks!

Today there remains only the Logis of Governors, which served for meetings of city officials, and the tower of medieval Guise leaning against the flag of Mars built in the eighteenth century.

 

Google Maps – Château de Tours

Château de Saumur Exterior

 

In brief

Fortress during the 13th century under the minority of Saint Louis then residence of the dukes of Anjou, the castle of Saumur overhangs majestically the Loire River. In 1480 Saumur returned to the estates of Louis XI, King of France, following the death of King René, the last duke of Anjou. The site successively became a residence for the town governors, a prison and a munitions depot. The monument houses the municipal museum since 1912.

The monument has been the object of a meticulous restoration campaign. The beautiful pieces from the collections are displayed in the Château and in the Abbatial hall.

 

 

 

 

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Saumur

Château de Saumur porcelain collection

Exposition de Cheval

 

Google Maps – Château de Saumur

 

 

 

 

 

Château de Chenonceau

 

Château de Chenonceau’s history is significant for the actions of a string of women who have lived here. Its architectural and garden features stand as monuments to the lives of these great women. Beginning as is often the case as a fortress, this site evolved from the 11th century to become a residential building with a sense of luxury and particularly, femininity that we don’t always see in the Châteaux of the Loire Valley. It is the second most visited château in France after Versailles.

Read the History ..

My secret garden

This rear garden sees a few visitors. Beatrix Potter would like it here.

Many residential gardens in France are hidden behind austere facades and this is particularly true in Paris apparently.

 

 

 

 

 

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A list of some notable gardens in Touraine

Just taking note of this while I think of it. It stands out in its omission of Villandry but the other gardens are less well known so a really good list

 

From Touraine Tourism Board

 

Nevers

Narrow winding streets lead from the quay through the town where there are numerous old houses dating from the 14th to the 17th century.

Nevers first enters written history as Noviodunum, a town held by the Aedui at Roman contact. The quantities of medals and other Roman antiquities found on the site indicate the importance of the place, and in 52 BCE, Julius Caesar made Noviodunum, which he describes as in a convenient position on the banks of the Loire, a depot (B. G. vii. 55). There he had his hostages, corn, his military chest, with the money in it allowed him from home for the war, his own and his army’s baggage and a great number of horses which had been bought for him in Spain and Italy. After his failure before Gergovia, the Aedui at Noviodunum massacred those who were there to look after stores, the negotiators, and the travelers who were in the place. They divided the money and the horses among themselves, carried off in boats all the corn that they could, and burned the rest or threw it into the river. Thinking they could not hold the town, they burned it. This was a great loss to Caesar; and it may seem that he was imprudent in leaving such great stores in the power of treacherous allies. But he was in straits during this year, and probably he could not have done other than he did. Dio Cassius (xl. 38) tells the story of Caesar out of the affair of Noviodunum. He states incorrectly what Caesar did on the occasion, and he shows that he neither understood his original nor knew what he was writing about. The city was later called Nevirnum, as the name appears in the Antonine Itinerary. In the Tabula Peutingeriana, it is corrupted into Ebrinum. In still other sources the name appears as Nebirnum. It became the seat of a bishopric at the end of the 5th century. The county dates at least from the beginning of the 10th century. The citizens of Nevers obtained charters in 1194 and in 1231. For a short time in the 14th century the town was the seat of a university, transferred from Orléans, to which it was restored.

 

Among the ecclesiastical buildings the most important is the Cathédrale of Saint Cyr-Sainte Juliette, dedicated to Saint Quiricus and Saint Julietta, which is a combination of two buildings, and possesses two apses. The apse and transept at the west end are the remains of a Romanesque church, while the nave and eastern apse are in the Gothic style and belong to the 14th century. There is no transept at the eastern end. The lateral portal on the south side belongs to the late 15th century; the massive and elaborately decorated tower which rises beside it to the early 16th century.

 

After 30 years of work, the stunning new stained glass windows in the Cathedral of St-Cyr-et-Ste-Juliette have been inaugurated. Contemporary in design, 130 picture windows have been created, costing 7.1 million euros. Jean-Michel Alberola, Gottfried Honnegaer, François Rouan, Raoul Ubac and Claude Viallat designed the new windows and worked in conjunction with master stained glass craftsmen. The original windows in the cathedral were destroyed in the bombing on the night of July 15-16 1944. The allied forces missed their target, a marshalling yard at Nevers railway station, showering the city with bombs and killing 162 inhabitants of the town. Three of the bombs exploded in the cathedral.

 

 

 

 

The Eglise Saint-Étienne de Nevers is a specimen of the Romanesque style of Auvergne of which the disposition of the apse with its three radiating chapels is characteristic. It was consecrated at the close of the 9th century, and belonged to a priory affiliated to Cluny.

Nevers is also a place of pilgrimage. Bernadette Soubirous, a simple country girl from Lourdes claimed that the Virgin appeared 18 times to her. Several miracles occurred as a result of this and Lourdes then became a famous place for pilgrims. Persuaded of her calling, she became a nun at St. Gildard, a convent of the Sisters of Charity of Nevers. She died there in 1879, was beatified and later canonised in 1933. Her body has lain at the Espace Bernadette Soubirous , 34 Rue St-Gildard since 1925 and every year half a million people stop at the shrine. At the Chapel of Saint Bernadette at the mother house of the Sisters of Charity of Nevers, it is possible to view the incorrupt remains of Bernadette Soubirous (Saint Bernadette) which are presented in a gold and crystal reliquary. Nevers is also on the pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostela.

 

The Ducal Palace (now occupied by the courts of justice and an important ceramic museum) was built in the 15th and 16th centuries and is one of the principal feudal edifices in central France. The façade is flanked at each end by a turret and a round tower. A middle tower containing the great staircase has its windows adorned by sculptures relating to the history of the House of La Marck by the members of which the greater part of the palace was built.

Behind the palace lies an open space with a fine view over the valley of the Loire. The Porte du Croux, a square tower, with corner turrets, dating from the end of the 14th century, is among the remnants of the old fortifications; it now contains a collection of sculptures and Roman antiquities.

 

A triumphal arch built from 1742 to 1746 on the site of the old medieval gate of the Ardilliers.

This triumphal arch, the only one visible in the department of Nièvre, commemorates the victory of King Louis XV at the Battle of Fontenoy in 1745. In spite of the revolutionary amputations of the remarkable sculptures and coats of arms which were at its summit, this monument was classified as a historical monument in 1930.

The history of Nevers, and in fact the whole of France can be traced through the pottery it is famous for, faïence. From Italian origins, this heavily patterned china depicts scenes from the ancien régime, to the Revolution in miniature on plates and ornaments. The Montagnon factory, Du Bout du Monde, founded in 1648, still carries on the traditions of generations. If you follow Le Fil Bleu, the blue line painted on the pavement from the Palais Ducal down Rue du 14 Juillet, it will lead you to the pottery quarter of town. Now a significant collection is on view at the Musée de la Faïence de Nevers in the beautifully renovated Abbaye de Notre Dame.

 

 

Economy

Nevers is the seat of a bishopric, of tribunals of first instance and of commerce and of a court of assizes and has a chamber of commerce and a branch of the Bank of France. Its educational institutions include several lycées, a training college for female teachers, ecclesiastical seminaries, a school of art of the automotive engineering college Institut supérieur de l’automobile et des transports. The town manufactures porcelain, agricultural implements, chemical manures, glue, boilers and iron goods, boots and shoes and fur garments, and has distilleries, tanneries and dye works. Its trade is in iron and steel, wood, wine, grain, livestock, etc. hydraulic lime, kaolin and clay for the manufacture of faience are worked in the vicinity.

Transport

The Gare de Nevers railway station offers connections to Paris, Dijon, Lyon, Clermont-Ferrand and several regional destinations. The A77 motorway connects Nevers with Paris.