Château d’Ecouen, the Museum of Renaissance, is probably the less visited and yet the most extraordinary of Paris’s suburban museums. Its collections of precious Murano glasses and French or Flemish tapestries are unique, and at the moment, a special exhibit projects a new light on Etienne Delaune, a printer born in Milan (French at the time) in 1518. His father, worked at the court of King François 1er and had followed him to Italy. Trained as a goldsmith, Delaune shows exemplary talent for printing and soon becomes the inspirer for many other decorative art artists who will use his drawings for enamel plaques and clocks as well as mirrors.Read More
Luca Giordano, another giant painter at Petit Palais
For his first exhibition in Paris, Neapolitan baroque painter Luca Giordano, transports us from Italy to Spain in the grandest manner. Born in 1634, almost a hundred years after Greco, this student of Jusepe de Ribera very inspired by Caravaggio, and adept of Rubens and Poussin, painted close to 5000 works for which he was nicknamed “Luca fa presto”, (Luca the fast). His first travels took him to Rome from where he returned with a new maturity and many monumental commissions for churches in Naples and palaces in Florence. Invited by the King of Spain he eventually moved to Madrid just before turning 60.Read More
The mythical château de Groussay is revisited by Alexandre Serebriakoff
At his conference at Sotheby’s, Pierre Arizzoli Clementel, who used to be Director of Versailles for 15 years, had the perfect voice for telling the magical story of Charles de Beistegui‘s life and style. The book he just wrote, based on the 35 watercolors by Alexandre Serebriakoff of château de Groussay, is important: it is the only thing left from this lifelong decor, created an hour west of Paris in Montfort l’Amaury. When Beistegui’s nephew, Johnny, decided to sell the house in June 1999, everyone suddenly realized what a world was disappearing with this 1820 style house. With the collaboration of interior architect Emilio Terry and the constant advice of Charles de Noailles, Groussay had been the center of elegance until 1970. Read More
Gerald Shea is honored by the city of Reims in a Franco American celebration
From the solemn morning ceremonies at a monument to World War I dead, to a sparkling evening in the ornate Salle des Fêtes at City Hall, the city of Reims went all out on Nov. 11, Armistice Day, to honor the Centenary of the American Memorial Hospital, a pediatric hospital founded in the ruined city in 1919 by a group of intrepid American women. It also turned out to be a good opportunity to toast Franco-American friendship, and to honor Gerald Shea, a lawyer and a writer, and the popular former President of the hospital’s board of directors. Since he is my brother in law, this reporting is brilliantly done by Celestine Bohlen, who I thank here for her contribution.Read More
George Eliot is celebrated in London
Everyone knows about George Eliot, might even have read “Middlemarch”, her extraordinary fresco of country life in Victorian England, but for me it was a discovery to find out how modern and liberated a woman she was, two hundred years ago. Thanks to Kathy O’Shaughnessy’s literary yet enjoyable biographical novel, “In love with George Eliot”, we now know that women’s liberation was more subtle in the 19 th century. The book, which was just published by Philip Gwyn Jones at Scribe, is already attracting raving reviews. A fun and brilliant party took place for the launch at the beautiful Daunt books in Marylebone, and Parisdiary was there of course.Read More
Min Jung-Yeon shines at Musée Guimet
I first met the Danish galerist Maria Lund when I bought, at Salon du dessin, a drawing on wood, by Korean artist Yoon Ji-Eun who studied at Ecole des Beaux Arts in Jean Michel Alberola’s studio. And I was happily surprised to meet at Musée Guimet one of her fellow students Min Jung-Yeon, who, like her, has remained in Paris and become a celebrated artist. The 40 year old artist has “carte libre” on the top floor of the museum with a beautiful birch forest, until February 17.Read More
Félix Fénéon, the Revolutionary collector, at l’Orangerie
It is not a coïncidence that the major painting of the exhibition “Fénéon, modern times from Seurat to Matisse” at Musée de l’Orangerie, used to belong to David Rockefeller, who gave it to MoMA after he died in 2017. The portrait of Félix Fénéon by Paul Signac in 1890, sums up his versatile personality. This anarchist, art critic, art dealer (at Bernheim Jeune) and caustic writer, was an active collector of African and Oceanian art and of Seurat of which there are 13 paintings in one extraordinary room and many drawings. After the Musée du Quai Branly, this is the second show on the art lover intellectual this year in Paris. The show will be at MoMA, in New York, from March 22 to July 15.Read More
I eat, therefore I am, at Musée de l’Homme
Musée de l’Homme stupefied us last year with a large exhibition on Neanderthal, where you could actually search for your own origins… This winter, “I eat, therefore I am” (Je mange donc je suis) exposes all the intricacies of food and eating habits in a scientific and sociological way. It is a fun and diverse exhibition with tv cooking lessons from the 1950’s and artistic food Buren style. But it also shows the customs of food habits from populations around the planet. On December 5, a Prehistoric banquet for 150 guests will take place on the third floor of the museum, facing the Eiffel Tower. Now is the time to register.