Esprit de france - le blog

On foot or on a bike, take the time to discover the streets and neighbourhoods that are filled with charm and that will tell you the history of Paris.

Between the Hotel des Saints Pères in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and the Hotel du Parc Saint-Séverin in the heart of the Latin Quarter, discover some of the famous Parisian sites…

The neighbourhood of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, bordered by the river Seine, the Luxembourg garden, the boulevard Saint-Michel and the rue des Saints Pères, owes its name to the nearby church the earliest stone of which dates back to 557. Today, the neighbourhood is made up of a maze of old streets full of art, books and fashion.

The Place Furstenberg

Le Café de Flore, les Deux Magots and the Brasserie Lipp, make up the golden triangle of the boulevard and the place Saint-Germain, which was once the hotspot for intellectuals such as, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Paul Eluard and André Breton; it has since become a historical location.

If you return up the rue Bonaparte, you will reach place Saint Sulpice, where the church, famous for its Eugène Delacroix frescoes and its chancel adorned with statues by Pigalle, was the main setting for Dan Brown’s novel, The Da Vinci Code.

From there, go down the rue Servandoni all the way to the Luxembourg Palace and its gardens. Commissioned by Queen Catherine de Medicis, the Palace still houses the Senate, whereas the gardens welcome temporary art expositions.

Leave the gardens by way of the boulevard Saint-Michel, you’ll be minutes away from the famous Panthéon and the rue Mouffetard and its typical Parisian market. If you go back up the boulevard Saint-Michel, you will find yourself near the Sorbonne and the Cluny Museum, the window of the history and art of the Middle Ages.

Behind the Hotel du Parc Saint-Séverin, nestled in the pedestrian area of the Latin Quarter, you’ll be next to the Ile Saint-Louis, Notre Dame, the Ile de la Cité and the Sainte Chapelle.

Through June 21, at the Jacquemart-André Museum, the exceptional works collected during the 19th century by the German baron Bernard von Lindenau are shown for the first time in Paris.

The exhibition highlights the succession of major aesthetic trends which deeply transformed Italian art between the second half of the 13th century and the end of the 15th century. The Greek style and Byzantine influence on the one hand and the appearance of the modern style after Giotto and the spread of the international Gothic style on the other, gradually gave way to the Renaissance style.

This  anthology of prestigious artists, from Guido da Siena to Liberale di Verona,  enables us to see two major schools side by side: the Sienese School, which counts Lippo Memmi, Pietro Lorenzetti and Sano di Pietro amongst its ranks, and the Florentine School, represented, amongst others, by Fra Angelico, Lorenzo Monaco, Masaccio and Filippo Lippi.

A fascinating and rare glimpse of post-medieval painting…

Through 21st of June 2009
Musée Jacquemart-André
158, boulevard Haussmann 75008 Paris
Téléphone : 01 45 62 11 59
www.musee-jacquemart-andre.com

Open all year round, between 10 a.m and 6 p.m

The Cernuschi museum, in Paris, presents until the 28th of June 2009, a rare exhibition - “Six centuries of Chinese paintings, works restored by the Cernuschi museum”. It features the greatest painters of the Imperial China, active in the literate Ming circles (1368-1644) or the Qing court (1644-1911).

It also reflects the fate of artists of the early XXth century in China, then
shaken by the beginnings of modernity and historical changes.
Among the Chinese painters tempted by the West, many people, since the
thirties, chose Paris as a venue for training and creation.

The contacts made by the Cernuschi museum with contemporary Chinese artists have allowed the museum to establish a unique collection in the West.

Located on the edge of the Parc Monceau in an elegant building originally designed by its founder Henri Cernuschi (1821-1896) as a small residence for a bachelor, the Cernuschi Museum, inaugurated in 1898, is one of the oldest museums in Paris. It offers visitors a tour of high aesthetic quality through Chinese art…

Until 28 June 2009

Musée Cernuschi
7 avenue Vélasquez
75008 Paris
Tel: 01 53 96 21 50

The Maillol Museum, in Paris, presents a comprehensive overview of the Russian avant-garde painters of the 1910-1930 period.
A superb selection of oil paintings, watercolors and drawings, from the collection Costakis, tracks the incredible creativity and the diversity of artists that marked symbolism, suprematism, constructivism and the beginning of the return to figuration in the late 20s, before socialist realism returned in an authoritarian way.

Alongside of now famous artists - Malevich, Popova, Klioun, Rodtchenko, Lissitzky, Tatlin – one discovers the works, often surprising, of unknown painters and displayed in France for the first time, such as Kudriashev, Redko, Matiouchine, Ender, Filonov, Nikritine …

The lithograph presented on the previous page is by Lissitsky (1919).
The painting presented on this page is by Rodtchenko (1920).

Fondation Dina Vierny- Musée Maillol
61 rue de Grenelle
75007 Paris
Metro station: rue du Bac

Tel: 01 42 22 59 58
Through March 2^nd 2009

The new generation of Chinese artists to be discovered…
through July 4 2009, in particular at the Hotel d’Orsay and the Hotel des Saints Pères.
Making art accessible to a large public, the Gallerie 208 Chicheportiche, with the Chinese cultural Center and  the city hall of the 7th arrondissement of Paris, exhibits modern Chinese art in various luxurious places of the district.

Among these venues, two Hotels Esprit de France welcome paintings from Tuo Guang Yan, at the Hotel d’Orsay, and Liu Yang, at the Hotel des Saints Pères.

The Hotel des Saints Pères also hosts an astonishing sculpture, named “Invisibility”, by Shu Xing Chuan.

Through May 4 2009

Hôtel d’Orsay. 93 rue de Lille. 75007 Paris. Tel: 01 47 05 85 54
Hôtel des Saints Pères. 65 rue des Saints Pères . 75006 Paris. Tél: 01 45 44 50 00