Musee d'Orsay (1850 - 1914)

The Orsay Museum picks up where the Louvre leaves off The building used to be a railroad station, so it is huge. Rick Steves states that it "houses the best general collection anywhere of Manet, Money, Renoir, Degas, van Gogh, Cezanne, and Gaughin." Well, I don't know if it is the best general collection, but we certainly saw many peices that I recognized. The collection starts in the time period that still has a vision of the ideal body, and there are a lot of statues and paintings showing the "ideal" man and woman, and then both. Not much is left to the imagination, but we've all seen photos of the best of these in text books.

Then the art movement changes to show regular people, not idealized, and sometimes a little scruffy. All quite interesting. I did get to see some of the paintings of Mr. Starry, Starry Night, Vincent himself. Good stuff and a thoroughly enjoyable tour.

Oh, we again dodged the long line and zipped into the museum with our passes. This is great! I feel like a real VIP!

We bought a Baguette Mixt with ham and cheese. Again, another common thing to order, and so good. Refreshed, we decided to hop onto our famous bus #69 and go to see the Rodin Museum, since we were in the artsy frame of mind. Also, we are pumped about Monet and decide to go to Giverny tomorrow, since we made it through more museums today than expected and can spend the time on a day trip.

AND my camera was exhausted about 3/4 of the way through the museum so I will have to use Kalen's pix in the next segment.