August 06, 2007

Let's be a little bit romantic


If you deviate a little from the normal tourist promenade of Montmartre, slightly downhill, you can find the small “Museum of the Romantics”. You have more or less to know the address (16 rue Chaptal), because it’s just an ordinary street, with some typical 19th century houses and then there is a small opening between two houses. If you walk up the little alley, you will suddenly come to a paved courtyard and you will see something which looks like a small manor house, more typical for the country side than for the centre of Paris.

This house used to belong to a painter called Ary Scheffer (1795-1858). His reputation as a painter is today perhaps not on the highest level, but you can find his works in some prestigious museums like Louvre, National Gallery… He was clearly a romantic painter and was well appreciated and well introduced in the high society during the first half of the 19th century. He made a lot of portraits including of Chopin and Liszt, who were also among his friends, as were Delacroix, George Sand, Rossini, Tourgueniev, Dickens… all frequent guests here.

The house was occupied by Scheffer’s heirs for a long time, but was then left to the City of Paris and is a museum since 1987.

Especially George Sand and Chopin who were close neighbours spent a lot of time here and part of George Sand’s belongings – furniture, paintings, jewellery, by her made drawings and a manuscript… are now exposed at the museum. You can also find a plaster cast of Chopin’s left hand. … and of course a number of paintings by Scheffer and some others.

After the visit, you can have something to drink in the very nice garden café.

23 comments:

Annie said...

Delightful tour, Peter, with you. Thank you for taking me along today.

Azer Mantessa said...

wow ... the place itself is inspirational.

Cuckoo said...

I have never seen such a beautiful Paris.
Than you Peter.

Olivier said...

Encore un de ces endroits caches de Paris. Merci pour toutes ces informations, j'avoue que je ne connaissais pas du tout.

Anonymous said...

This looks like a gem Peter - I'm putting it on my list of places to visit. I prefer this sort of experience to the now customary "big show" gallery exhibitions. More of a connection with the past

Chuckeroon said...

I must go along with Richard. what a fine collection of everything together and all so easilly in the hand. It was nice to be taken in to the world of Chopin, one of my favourites. Thank you, again.

Shionge said...

I would love to have all the time in the world to appreciate the artistic work of that era :D

Thank for your kind comments Peter :D Put a smile on my face ;)

hpy said...

Et au Havre nous avons le musée Malraux!

SusuPetal said...

Oh, I would like to have a drink in that beautiful garden!

By the way, can you help me, Peter? When I was in Paris centuries ago, I visited a museum of mechanical music toys. I can't remember the exact location and therefore I tried to search the museum from the net, but didn't succeed.
The museum was quite small and not in the best of condition, so maybe it has been cloded or transferred somewhere else. I remember that on the outer walls of the building there were paintings.
Do you have any knowledge or recollection of such a museum?

GMG said...

I'm glad to know that I'm not the only one to have missed this beauty until you showed it to us... Wonderful post!
Thanks for your comment on Cassis; it was a rush post and I re-arranged it after your comment!
Did you catch my answer to your quarry on Peru/Bolivia?
Have a great day, I’m late...
Gil

Anonymous said...

I am always interested in painters and their homes and the homes of just ordinary people. I think that tells a whole different story about life, art and humanity. I enjoyed your post today.

I will have to show you some time a couple of my greatest paintings. Some are 12 feet wide. My idol was/still is Rembrandt followed by the illustrator who I knew well, Norman Rockwell. Both were inspirations to me when I thought I could provide for me and my family of five children and my wife, Patty. I quickly learned that it took one oil painting sale to buy a new washing machine and then I had to crate another one to buy a matching clothes dryer.

When I began to think how my life would be when I had to paint my way through it, I decided the life of a painter, famous or not, was not my cup of tea. But I did give it a shot for a number of years.

I have been involved in so many things in my life that to pick out one thing would be doing the other things a disservice.

I wrote about atomic bombs today on the anniversary of the Little Boy explosion over the Japanese city of Hiroshima which I have seen.

Abraham Lincoln
Atomic Bombs and Nuclear Energy

Peter said...

susupetal:

I could imagine that you refer to "le Musée des Arts Décoratifs" which I have visited, but not the toy part. The address is actually Louvre, but with a specific gate. I have one net address for you. Do you think this is the one you were thinking of?
http://www.paris.org/Musees/Decoratifs/

gmg:
Thanks! I have rechecked and commented on your blog!

abraham:
You continue to amaze us! I could somehow imagine you as a Norman Rockwell, but have to be a bit more imaginative for the Rembrandt part! Looking forward to see you paintings!

Zhang Chunhong said...

Avec toi, on voit Paris d'un autre oeil.

Chuckeroon said...

P, I've dropped a comment on Hammerton's Ferry at http://www.richmonduponthamesdailyphoto.blogspot.com/

I agree with you...Abe's a "one off" isn't he.

Anonymous said...

Actually, Rembrandt and Rockwell were a lot alike in different ways. I liked almost all of the Dutch masters and tried, for many years, to mimic their work. I could never get down to using the camera obscura that they used but I tried cameras and that was a pain in the butt.

My work never did look like any of the old master's. I just got inspiration from them.

I did a lot of moon or lunar landscapes before people got there. And my information for them came from NASA as we were working on lunar shelters then and things like rescue beacons. So it would be hard to compare a lunar landscape with something Rembrandt did. Maybe Pablo Picasso's early work.

SusuPetal said...

Thanks, Peter, but that wasn't the one:(
This was sometime at the end of 80's, the house where the museum was, was quite small and in bad shape. You went to the entrance through a little, wild garden. There were only few rooms in the entire museum, but it had wonderful pieces of mechanical music toys, really beautiful.

I check out with my companion of this trip, and we try to figure the location from the map.

Maxime said...

Looks like a house in the countryside. But there is a bit too much of everything in there. I Feel romantism like a more simple mood.

Mélisse said...

Un ami m'avait recommandé ce musée, mais je n'ai pas eu l'occasion de suivre ses conseils. Quand je vois le charme de l'endroit je constate qu'il me connaissait bien...
J'irais certainement y faire un tour lors de mon prochain passage à Paris, tes photos ont fini de me convaincre ;-)

black feline said...

charming place...i think they dont make such houses anymore..a good location for some period movies as well...

Peter said...

Thanks all for your comments! Yes it's a charming little place and I would also have missed if Cergie had not told me about it!

krystyna said...

Breath-taking place!
Thanks for these Beauty!

lee kline said...

Thanks for the tour and for getting me back to the Museum of the Romantic. We visited some years ago and will again next summer.
Lee Kline

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