His work overall was beautiful. Having that said, I was surprised by how stoic I felt toward some of his later pieces. To me, they seemed messy and unexciting. Ironically, I felt as though some of them could have been the pieces that one of the 5,239,457 seven-year-olds walking around the museum would have brought home from art class (See Below). Their mom would (of course) say it was beautiful and hang it up on the fridge for a couple of days, but wouldn't even think to show off to all her friends at ladies night.
Alright, bonne nuit, the end, see ya later, à demain!
I am obviously kidding. :)
I would never end the story bashing a historically famous painter for a few pieces that didn't tickle my fancy - it tickled, and continues to tickle the fancies of people all over the world every day. But a girl has her right to her own opinions. I don't mean what I said in a condescending way. I like to paint messy too - that is, just throw some paint on a canvas and see what happens. In fact, one of my favorite painters in the whole world, Amanda Krantz, is the messiest painter I have ever seen and I think her work is beautiful (see below). What this style of painting Monet fashioned made me think was that work like this is really just insight into the minds and passion of these painters: it illustrates how much he loved what he did.
I did, on the other hand, absolutely LOVE his ealier pieces like the Nymphéas (of course) and others from his water lily collection (of course). They were magical and I am not just saying that because I compared some of his work to a seven-year-old's earlier - I swear. There were even some that I loved that I had never even seen before, such as his depiction of the train station, shown below. But enough about Monet.
As I expected, the building walls of Le Musée Marmottan Monet were spectacularly clean, classy, and lined with both chairs you're not allowed to sit on and paintings worth more than I want to think about. Many of the artists, including Fabre, Boilly, Gauffier, Carmontelle, Marmottan, etc. were artists of the First Empire: realism pieces depicting the High Middle Ages. Though I am usually a fan of abstract and contemporary art, I realized that I was really taken aback by one piece: François-Xavier Fabre's painting of Portrait de la duchesse de Feltre et de ses enfants.
I stared at this piece for at least 23 minutes straight, and probably 9 of those minutes staring at the oldest son's right kneecap. I'm not even kidding. There was so much detail that I actually felt like I could have been the Duchesse's servant or babysitter standing right in the room with her and her family. I felt like I could reach out and touch the velvet fabric of the couch and pillows, the silk detail of the oldest son's sleeve, and the tassels hanging from the youngest son's belt. I have never seen anything like it, nor have I ever experienced any feeling so strange in reaction to a painting before (perdón my lack of thinking of a better word than "strange" to describe this feeling. Its 1:12 in the morning). But it was truly magnificent.
This was the first art museum I explored. There are about a million and four more in Paris alone to be explored. I will keep you updated with a better word to describe the feeling I had when looking at Fabre's portrait of the Duchesse and her family as I am sure that this incredible feeling with be experienced again, and soon. :)
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