Les oeuvres de Monet

I don't know if I have mentioned this on my blog in the past, but one place I've been wanting to visit since before I even arrived here is Giverny, or home to the famous French impressionist, Claude Monet. I planned to go and do just that on the Monday just gone, when I realised with a sinking feeling that the cost of my train ticket there and the entrance fee to the gardens themselves actually equated to all the money I have left for this month, and tempting though it was (and it was very tempting. I almost went anyway), sensibleness won out. After all, I didn't think it was really very smart to leave myself with only €0.30 in copper coins for the remaining five days of my time here.

So that's another casualty on my bucket list, and the one I am most sad about, without question. I was really looking forward to going and I'm super disappointed that it didn't happen. But these things happen, and I know my mum was jealous that I was going, so maybe she'll come with me to do it one day in the future.

Still, I am an appreciator of Monet and impressionist works, and as it happens, a lot of Monet's most famous works live in various museums right here in Paris. I went and looked at them last week, on my first free day after exams (the only reason I didn't blog it earlier was because I had been planning to do a joint paintings/Giverny post, but as I said, it was not to be). 

I started off at the Musée Marmottan Monet, in the 16th arrondissement of Paris.

It's home to the largest collection of Monet works in the world as well as paintings by lots of other famous masters, including Manet, David, Gérard and Cézanne.

After that I took the metro over to Concorde, spent a while soaking up some rays in the Tuilieries and then went into the Musée de l'Orangerie which is home to Monet's Water Lilies. You're not technically supposed to take photos, but of course people have and a quick google images search will show you the impressive paintings (of which I think I counted eight, and they're all huge). In fact, one of his paintings from the water lilies series has just sold at Sotheby's in London for £31.7m.

Anway, the paintings were all very interesting to look at and hear more about. It's not quite Giverny, but it will do for now.

Vicky xx