An Eye for Detail

Paris Muse guides describe some of their favorite things about Paris and its art treasures. Get a feeling for what's in store for you when you reserve a tour with us.

The Dazzle of Matisse

From our “Monet and More” Orangerie guide Kristen:

Matisse’s paintings often depict subjects, like the reclining woman at the center of this painting, which fool you into thinking his art is all about relaxation. His sensually posed model may be taking a breather here, but our eye sure gets a work out. It has to shuttle back and forth to take in all those marvelously complex decorative structures. One Matisse writer described this effect as “optical dazzle,” as if a flash bulb has gone off in our eyes.

Notice how the simple, boldly striped pattern of the North African blanket competes with the French-style red wallpaper surrounding it. Matisse was an avid collector of fabrics from around the world, and adorned his studios in Nice with them. His fascination with textile design was related in part to where he grew up, in Bohain, in northern France, a region dominated by the textile industry.

Other influences came from further afield. This painting also reflects Matisse’s travel experiences outside of France, specifically in North Africa. Throughout the 1920s, Matisse did a whole series of odalisque fantasy paintings, featuring his favorite model Henriette playing the role of a kept woman in a harem. This painting, for example, is only one of four odalisques paintings in the Orangerie's collection alone. While at the Orangerie, be sure to take a look at Picasso’s Woman with a Tambourine (1925) which hangs nearby. It is a deliberate, slyly provocative response to Picasso's rival Matisse, and his fascination with this voluptuous subject.

Mystery Doors on the Seine

From our "Historic Heart" walking tour guide Larissa:

Have you ever noticed those mysterious numbered doorways—like the one at the left in our photograph above—while you were strolling along the Seine? Have you ever wondered where they might lead?

Some of these doors, now blocked up, used to connect the river with the houses built along its banks. Others led to shops built into these embankment walls themselves.

Just in the shadow of Notre-Dame cathedral, there was a door leading directly into the city’s oldest hospital, Hôtel-Dieu. (You can see the chimneys of today’s Hôtel-Dieu jutting just above the wall in our photograph). 17th-century crowding at the hospital (by then already over 900 years old) led to an unusual idea for expansion. Additional hospital wards were built over a nearby bridge, the Pont au Double!

The nuns who worked at the hospital used passageways to go directly from the wards down to the river. Every day they emerged from these doorways to wash their patients’ clothes in the less than clean river water, earning them the nickname les petites laveuses or “the little washerwomen.”

For a full description of this walking tour, click here.

Renaissance Gem

From our "Hidden Masterpieces of the Louvre" guide Amy:

One of the most beautiful Renaissance paintings in the Louvre— Jan van Eyck's Chancellor Rolin Madonna c. 1434— is also the most difficult to find. You won't find it in the more crowded Italian galleries, where everyone is heading to see the Mona Lisa. It's in the Netherlandish rooms (Richelieu second floor, galleries 4 and 5), where a whole other equally fascinating Northern Renaissance unfolds.

Look at how van Eyck's painting balances scrupulous attention to earthly details with spiritual symbolism. In the walled garden in the background, for example (itself a symbol of Mary's virginity), the minutely-detailed white lilies symbolize her purity; the red roses, the Passion of Christ. The two birds (magpies) on the garden's path allude to death.

In this one tiny devotional image then, we have both a meditation on the awesome powers of the divine and on the human ability to make sense of its creation.

For a full description of this unique painting tour in the Louvre, click here.

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