My Quest for Rembrandt

My main goal today was to see the Dutch wing of the Louvre.  When we were here four years ago the Flemish, Belgian and Dutch section was closed for renovation.  Today I should have checked the schedule more carefully, because the section was once again closed, but only for the day.  The Louvre is so large that they close different sections each day.  One cannot succeed on a Rembrandt quest on a Thursday.  We will return tomorrow.

Before going to the Louvre, we visited the Musee de L'Orangerie today, famous for its two rooms that are encircled by Monet's Water Lilies paintings wrapping around on the walls.  We were not allowed to take photos in those rooms, but were able to do so in the other rooms.  If you saw Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, you are familiar with what these rooms look like.  Honestly, I didn't know about this museum before that movie.  It is tucked in the tulleries, a beautiful garden that is next to the Louvre.

We did get some pictures of the other paintings in the museum.  The painters that were familiar to me were Cezanne, Renoir, Rousseau, Matisse, Monet and Picasso.  Bean really enjoyed the Matisse paintings, while my highlights were the Cezanne's.  I would have loved to see more by Rousseau, but this is not a very large museum.

The focus of the museum seemed to be the transition from impressionism (post-impressionism) to modernism.  You could really see how the painters start to play with shapes and forms, kind of playing games with perspective.  Below are some of the pictures from the museum.

Here are Gina's favorites from De L'Orangerie.

We also visited the Les Arts Decoratits - it is a part of the Louvre, but it has a separate entrance.  Gina was really interested in the Louis Vuitton/Marc Jacobs exhibit.  But it was too hot and crowded to fully enjoy.  We did take some photos (below).