Friday May 19th

Our last full day in Paris; we are off to the left bank of the Seine River to visit Musee D’Orsay,  the former Gare d’Orsay, railway station built for the World Exhibition 1900 and re-purposed as a gallery in only 1986.  The Musée d’Orsay’s collection includes stunning works by painters including Gauguin, Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Cézanne, and Van Gogh to name just a few.  I have visited this gallery several times in the past and always been impressed by the focused collection of impressionist and post impressionist paintings but this time I seem completely absorbed by the work of Cezanne.  As I study the paintings carefully one masterpiece after the other I am reminded Picasso’s tribute to Cezanne calling him the “Father of us all” and I can not  separate Cezanne’s catalytic connection between Impressionism, Post Impressionism and what emerged as Modern painting.  My heart is literally pounding in my chest with excitement over my little epiphanies with each gem I see.

Timing is everything and it just so happens a special exhibit entitled Beyond the Stars: “The mystical landscape from Monet to Kandinsky” is on temporary display: organized in partnership with the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, the special exhibition explores the genre of landscape principally through the works of Paul Gauguin, Maurice Denis, Ferdinand Hodler and Vincent Van Gogh, but also presents North American painters such as Georgia O’Keeffe, Emily Carr, Thompson and Harris who are less well known in France.   I feel a sense of Canadian pride seeing these amazing paintings along side their European Counterparts …. they do not look out of place one bit.

The afternoon is spent with half the group sketching and drawing at the Rodin Museum with it’s beautiful gardens and exquisite out door Rodin Sculptures.   Sad to leave Paris tomorrow morning but it will be nice to slow the pace down a little and get away from the constant traffic and huge crowds.