My first introduction to an art museum was in Washington DC. I was a young mom and had taken my kids to spend a couple days in the city seeing all the things that I never got to see when I was a kid. We took a short cut through the National Gallery of Art simply to get from one street to another easily.
I was a small town girl and had never been in an art museum before and suddenly there I was standing in front of a Rembrandt. A real Rembrandt! And it overwhelmed me that this was actually THE famous painting that the artist had created. Not a print, not a photograph, and I was awestruck.
Since then I have been to see some amazing works of art in fantastic museums all around the world.
These photos are from our family albums and were taken a few weeks ago when my kids went to Paris.
The Orsay Museum was a major Parisian railway station called Gare d'Orsay between 1900 and 1936 and was restored and renovated in the 1980s.
Fields in the Month of June by Charles François Daubigny, 1874
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Giovane Donna Con Violtetta 1870
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My granddaughter viewing Madame Pascal portrait by Leon Bonnat- 1874 I'm so pleased that my kids love art museums as much as I do!
Pierre-Auguste Renoir used Henriette Henriot as his model for La Parisienne. She was sixteen years old at the time of the painting and had not yet begun her stage career.
Masked Ball at the Opera- Edward Manet
GIUSEPPE DE NITTIS. In the wheat fields 1873
Le Havre, Bateau de Pêche Sortant du Port, 1874, Claude Monet (1840-1926)
Paul Cézanne - Montagne Saint-victoire -
Cézanne spent a lot of time in Aix-en-Provence at the time, and developed a special relationship with the landscape. He could see this particular mountain, from his house, and he painted it in on numerous occasions.
On a trip to France in 2003 I got to go for a hike on Cézanne's mountain. I brought back a pocket full of rocks that I picked up during my hike.
