Weekend of 5-2 & 5-3-15

(Ed. note; I saw a message that the text for the entry "Deb talks about food again 5-14-15" was showing black text which made it very difficult to read.  I fixed this today)

This weekend was a rainy one from Friday until late afternoon Sunday, when it finally cleared up.  But we were undeterred in our weekend quest which was to go to the Brocante market at the Porte de Vanves.  I mentioned before that brocante's are small time dealers of antiques and collectibles, like we did for a few years in the 90's.  They are always a treat to visit because of the wide range of interesting things to look at and in some cases purchase.  This weekend was no different except that it was in a light, and sometimes not so light, rain.   Most of the dealers are prepared and have covered booths so a light rain is not much problem, but the heavier rains are a different story.  Sunday it caused several to pack up really early, I think because things were getting a bit wet but also because the number of customers was fairly small.  And the marches are over at 2:00pm each day leaving several hours of time for seeing other things.

On Saturday after the marche we rode a bus up to the Gare Montparnasse where we got off and made our way to the Musee Bourdelle.  If you'll recall we've attempted to visit this museum about 4 times before and each time we got off on another tangent.   Well today there was no interim interference to keep us from our goal and we made it to the museum.   Bourdelle was at one point a student of Rodin and was hailed by that master as the next bearer of the torch.   He was very prolific and created sculptures from the merely small to the monumentally large for many buildings in France and throughout Europe.  He is also represented in the Denver Art Museum collection.  


Interestingly they have many bronze castings of his work but in addition they have the full-size plaster models from which the castings were created.  All in all a very worthwhile museum to see.







On Sunday, in keeping with the momentum we had following Saturday's success, we made another visit to the Louvre.  On this visit we saw several rooms of paintings from French painters of the 19th century which were donated by two farseeing French collectors.   The Louvre had neglected to collect these artists during their formative years and therefore had no collection to speak of so the donations of the two collectors were very timely.   Basically the painters were painting in the tradition named Romanticism, so heavy on the emotional content.   One of the best known romantic painters was Delacroix but another very important painter was Camille Carot.  Carot was very influential on the Impressionists and his paintings really broke the chokehold of the Fountainbleu school on the usages of light and color.  In addition he made definite moves towards painting, "en plein aire",  outside the studio in the environment.  Those of you familiar with what Deb and I collect will see the affinity with the paintings we collect, just 20 years earlier.

One problem for us is that once it clears up we're completely overdressed,  so Sunday afternoon once the sun came out we turned into sweaty messes.   Layers came off and got stuffed in to the backpack, which helped considerably.