Musée de l'Orangerie and the Place Vendôme

You wouldn't think that people would flock to a museum where the main exhibit is just eight paintings.  But there were plenty of people lined up to see Monet's water lily paintings this afternoon.  After not too long a wait, we were inside.

Claude Monet Matin

In 1918, Monet offered some of his larger Nymphéas (water lilies) paintings to the state to commemorate the end of WWI.  These works are more than six feet tall, and are between 20 and 40 feet long. 

Reflets Verts

Monet worked with the architect to renovate an existing greenhouse space in the Tuileries garden.  They decided on a layout of two oval salons, each one displaying four of the Nymphéa paintings.

Soleil Couchant

The white shades on the ceilings diffuse the light, which is an effect that Monet intended in order to best view these paintings.  In case my previous photos make you think we had the room to ourselves, here is what it looked like in the first salon.

For Monet, painting the same subject in a series of paintings allowed him to show the subject in various lighting conditions at different times of day or in different seasons.  He worked on his water lily series for the last 30 years of his life, spending a lot of time at his garden in Giverny, France.

Le Matin Clair aux Saules

The exhibit at the Orangerie opened in 1927, five months after Monet's death at the age of 86.

Reflets d'Arbres

Downstairs is an exhibit area that was renovated in 2006.  While they were digging, they discovered the remnants of one of the walls that used to encircle Paris, dating to the 1630's.  They left it exposed for visitors to view.

On display downstairs is a permanent exhibit containing works by Picasso, Matisse, Renoir, and Cézanne, donated by art collectors Paul Guillaume and Jean Walter.  At the beginning of the exhibit are some miniature rooms showing what the homes of these collectors looked like.

Here is Kevin next to Paul Cézanne's La Barque et les beigneurs.  After hours in an art museum, he kind of looks like he'd rather be on a boat right about now.

These three Matisses were eye-catching.  From left: Odalisque à la culotte grise, Femmes au canapé, and Odalisque à la culotte rouge.

I really liked this one, André Derain's Arlequin et Pierrot.

And a few more interesting ones.  Clockwise from left:  Chaim Soutine's La Maison Blanche and Les Maisons, Amedeo Modigliani's Antonia, and Maris Laurencin's Portrait de Madame Paul Guillaume.

 After the museum, we walked up Rue de Castiglione towards Place Vendôme.  Of course, we had to stop by the Westin Vendôme.

The Ritz, by comparison, doesn't look nearly as inviting!

And this is the Place Vendôme, a large square lined with high-end hotels and fashionable jewelry stores.  The column in the center of the square is the Vendôme Column, modeled after Trajan's column in Rome.  Napoleon had it built to celebrate a military victory at Austerlitz.

Our final stop was at the Église Saint-Roch on Rue du Faubourg-St.-Honoré.  Due to several interruptions, the baroque church was built over the course of a century from the 1650's to the 1750's.

The inside is really beautiful, with a huge dome and gorgeously painted ceiling.

Each of the side chapels was fully decorated, almost a museum in itself.  This is the Chapel of the Annunciation, with its carved wooden altarpiece.

This is the awe-inspiring Chapelle de la Vierge (Lady Chapel).  Michel Anguier's marble Nativity sculpture Val de Grace is at the center, and above is Étienne Maurice Falconet's Divine Glory.

And finally, a better view of the central dome in the transept with the painted ceiling by Adolphe Roger called The Triumph of Christ.

One last image from the end of our walk -- this is the entrance to the Palais-Royal metro stop, just down Rue du Faubourg St.-Honoré.  It's an aluminum and Murano glass work by Jean-Michel Othoniel.