Musee De L'Orangerie

Monet Lillies

The Musee de L’Orangerie was our favourite, built in 1847, the Orangery of Tuileries soon lost its fruit trees to become a storehouse. Its destiny became clearer when Monet chose it to house the complete cycle of the Nympheas (the famous Water Lilies) on which he worked on from 1914 until his death in 1926. 2 metres high, almost 100 long these paintings are hung on the walls in two oval adjoining rooms, these rooms were designed by Monet himself to create a, “decompression space” between the cities agitation and his work. When he donated The Water Lilies to France right after the first world war, Monet wanted to give Parisians a peaceful haven by inviting them to contemplate the infinite before painted nature, “Nerves overwrought by work would relax there just like the relaxing example of those stagnant waters, and for whomever inhabited it, this room would offer asylum for peaceful meditation amidst a flowery aquarium”... He wrote this in 1909 when he started to mature his project, they ask that prior to entering The Water Lilies rooms you please take a moment to pause.

The eight panels presented in these two rooms evoke the hours passing, from morning in the East to sunset in the West. I didn’t realize that when this exhibit opened in 1927 that he had already passed away and that only 40 people came to see his work on the opening day, then the museum was left in disarray until it was reopened again after the second world war and this time the oval room renovated once again to house his work and the work of Jean Walter and Paul Guillaume, which were fabulous too but Monet is who I fell in love with. It was so sad to see the pictures of the museum during the war with a leaking roof and torn ceilings with the Monet lilies still hanging on the walls, it felt to me like a child had been left alone to fend for itself, yikes , scary feeling, so Im sooo happy now that they are back in a safe environment in a repaired and beautifully renovated museum where they are now viewed and appreciated by hundreds of people a day, Monet would be happy!

If you want to see some very old and famous original artwork but don’t want to be overwhelmed then i would suggest De L Orangerie, its a lovely spot and just enough to really get the feel of things and to relax, just the way Monet would have wanted, it was a complete thrill to see that today his work is so appreciated.

Monet had cataracks towards the end of doing the paintings and he is said to have been working on these to complete them nearly blind, I stood a foot from these original works or art and i think he would have had to work from intuition a lot of the time anyway as the paintings are so large when you are that close all you see is the brush strokes, its not until you stand back that you see the finished product, and so pretty it was. He said that he wanted these paintings to become a place where people could come out and away from their busy lives and meditate by stepping into his paintings and loosing themselves there for a while and thats what happens, when you enter the room its all white, natural daylight shines thru a cheesecloth veil in the skylights and there is a sign that says quiet please, you are allowed to take pictures but no flash. There are seats in the middle and you do get lost in the paintings its very lovely. I wanted to go to his home and gardens just 40mins from Paris, this is where he got his inspiration from, but with the rain we didn’t get there, apparently you can go and paint in his gardens.