We headed back to Paris VERY early today to bid farewell to Big Papa at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport. After seeing his flight take off for Chicago, we hopped onto the RER train to our hotel in the 7th (practically in the 6th), the Hôtel Lenox Saint-Germain – 9, rue de l’Université 75007. We dropped off our bags, and headed over to the Musée D’Orsay to see the very popular Cézanne and Pissarro 1865-1885 International Exhibition. Since we had purchased our tickets a few days in advance, we we were able to get in right away without having to wait in line outside. However, once inside the exhibit, it was “noir du monde” (very crowded), which makes it a bit difficult to read all the wall text, and to spend as much time as one would like in front of each painting. All that said, we enjoyed the exhibition immensely. The exhibit was assembled by Pissarro’s great-grandson, Joachim Pissarro, who is the curator for the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He carefully paired the paintings of Paul Cézanne and Camille Pissarro to show the similarities and the differences between them. It seemed like Cezanne’s painting were often a bit more abstract and very rarely included people, while Pissarro’s paintings were usually more precisely defined and often included people in his landscapes. I particularly enjoyed the pairing of the still lifes by each artist in which one of Pissarro’s previously painted landscapes (La Rue de Gisors, maison du père Gallien, Pontoise) hung in the background. It was like seeing a painting within a painting in Cézanne’s Nature Morte à la Soupière and Pissarro’s Portrait de Cézanne. It was clear to see that both Camille Pissarro and Paul Cézanne had influenced each other’s work during the 20+ years of their relationship.
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