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Paris Temporary Exhibitions

 

Thursday 27 February, 10:30 – 12 noon 

The Strange Tales of Niels Hansen Jacobsen – A Dane in Paris (1892-1902)

Visit to the exhibition at the Musée Bourdelle (29 Jan. – 31 May 2020) with Chris Boïcos.

 

This is the first exhibition to be dedicated to the Danish Symbolist sculptor and ceramicist Niels Hansen Jacobsen (1861-1941) in France. A contemporary of Antoine Bourdelle (1861-1929), his work was strongly marked by a taste for the bizarre, the macabre and the “uncanny”. His sculptures revived Nordic mythology and Scandinavian folklore and the fantastic aspects of Hans Andersen’s tales. From 1892 to 1902, Hansen Jacobsen lived in Paris, where his Montparnasse studiobecame the meeting place for the Paris Scandinavian artists and visitors.  The Art Nouveau ceramicist Jean Carriès and the illustrator Eugène Grasset were his neighbors. Nielsen’s use of organic forms and arabesque rhythms links him to the international Art Nouveau style of his day but with an added edge of macabre expressionism and emotional intensity which makes him one of the most original European sculptors of his period. A wonderful opportunity to discover an exceptional figure of early modern art seldom shown outside his native Denmark.

 

Place: Meet in lobby of Musée Bourdelle, 18 Rue Antoine Bourdelle, 75015 Paris

Métro: Closest is Falguière (line 12). You can also use Montparnasse (lines 4,6,13)

Time: 10:15 for 10:30 am entry. Please bring 7 € in exact change for the exhibition ticket.

This tour is limited to 18 participants.

Fee: 27 € (or reduced fee for series, please below)

 

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Thursday 12 March, 11 – 12:30 pm

Petit Palais – Courbet and the Permanent Collection of 19^th Century Masters

Visit to the Musée du Petit Palais (29 Jan. – 31 May 2020) with Chris Boïcos.

 

Originally the decorative arts pavilion of the 1900 World’s Fair, the Petit Palais re-opened in 2005 after a meticulous 5-year restoration. Discover one of the most exuberant décors of the Belle Epoque housing the permanent art collections (old masters to early 20^th century) of the city of Paris.  In our visit we will concentrate on the 19th century pictures, with some very fine examples by Salon artists like Bouguereau  and Fernand Pelez, including Clairin’s celebrated portrait of Sarah Bernhardt. The collection also houses great pictures by modern 19c masters like Daumier, Cézanne, Monet, Sisley, Cassatt , Bonnard  and Maurice Denis and best of all Gustave Courbet, two of whose most notorious pictures, Sleep, and Demoiselles au bord de la Seine are here. 

 

Place: Stairs or lobby (if raining) of Petit Palais avenue Winston Churchill 75008.
Métro: Champs-Elysées- Clemenceau (lines 1, 13).

Time: 10:45 for 11 am start. This museum has free entry.

Fee: 27 € (or reduced fee for series, please below)

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Tuesday 17 March, 10:30 – 12 noon 

Musée d’Orsay – The new Post-Impressionist galleries: Seurat, van Gogh Gauguin…

Visit to the Musée du Petit Palais (29 Jan. – 31 May 2020) with Chris Boïcos.

 

Inaugurated in the winter of last year, the new Post-Impressionist galleries of the Musée d’Orsay are the initiative of the new museum director, Laurence des Cars. This remarkable collection of Neo-Impressionist artists (Seurat, Signac, Cross, Martin), the Pont Aven School (Gauguin, Bernard, Sérusier, Anquentin) and Vincent van Gogh was previously crowded in the small, dark rooms of the museum’s mezzanine level. It is now displayed beautifully hung, in a sequence of spacious galleries with fine lighting on the museum’s top floor just after its celebrated Impressionist galleries. The new display ends with two rooms devoted to the remarkable near-abstract color panels painted by Odilon Redon for the dining room of the Chateau de Domecy-sur-le-Vault, here fully displayed in the museum for the first time. Among the masterpieces we will be seeing, are Gauguin’s “Belle Angèle”, his last Tahitian sculptures, van Gogh’s “The Church at Auvers” and his 1889 “Self Portrait”, Seurat’s “Circus” and Bernard’s seminal painting “Breton women in a Green Pasture”.

 

Place: Inside Musée d’Orsay: Past ticket control, down the steps in front of statue of Liberty.

Métro: RER Musée d’Orsay (line C) or Solférino (line 12).

Time: 10:15 for 10:30 am start. Please buy your ticket on line and use ticket holders’ entrance.

Fee: 27 € (or reduced fee for series, please below)

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Thursday 19 March 10:40 am – 12:10 noon

Cézanne and the Masters: A Dream of Italy.

Visit to the exhibition at the Musée Marmottan (27 Feb. – 5 July 2020) with Chris Boïcos.

 

For the first time, in this exhibition, the works of the great Impressionist painter Paul Cézanne will be presented alongside pictures by the Italian masters of the 16th, 17^th and 18th centuries that he most admired. A remarkable selection of canvases by the forerunner of Cubism, including an iconic Montagne Sainte-Victoire, and major still lifes, will face a rare ensemble of paintings by masters like Tintoretto, El Greco, Ribera, Giordano and Poussin. As counterpart to the Old Masters, work by modern Italian artists who were in turn impacted by Cézanne - Carrà, Sironi, Soffici, Pirandello, Boccioni, Morandi – will also be presented next to the Impressionist master’s paintings. The sixty masterpieces on show come from leading public and private collections around the world, including the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection in Madrid, the Pola Museum in Kanagawa, and the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. 

 

Place: Meet in group line by entrance of Musée Marmottan - 2, rue Louis Boilly 75016

Métro: La Muette (line 9).

Time: 10:25 for 10:40 am entry. Please bring 10€ for the exhibition ticket and 2€ for the earphones in exact change (12€ total).

This tour is limited to 20 participants.

Fee: 27 € (or reduced fee for series, please below)

 

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Thursday 26 March 10:30 – 12 noon

James Tissot – An Ambiguous Modernity

Slide lecture on the exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay (24 March – 19 July 2020) with Chris Boïcos.

This is the first retrospective exhibition devoted to James Tissot in Paris since the exhibition organized at the Petit Palais in 1985. Less known than his contemporary Realist and Impressionist colleagues – Degas, Whistler, Manet – Tissot is nevertheless a key painter in the depiction of modern life in the second half of the 19^th century. His paintings focused on the customs, fashions and ambiguities of high society in France and England, in a manner perhaps most reminiscent of Henry James’ depictions of the same world in his fiction. Born in Nantes and trained at the Paris Ecole des Beaux Arts, Tissot made his debut in the capital in the late 1850s, where his passion for Japanese art, his projected image of consummate modern dandy and his connections with influential circles helped further his career. After the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 and the Paris Commune, he moved to London where his highly detailed, glossy style in which every ribbon and fashion accessory is painted with painstaking exactitude, proved to be an immense success with the Victorian public. After the death in 1882 of his companion the beautiful Kathleen Newton, his muse and model for many of the society beauties in his paintings, he returned to France.  His career continued with Women of Paris, images of Parisian women of all classes, but also explorations of mystical and religious subjects, with the Prodigal Son series and illustrations of the Bible, which brought him great fame at the turn of the 19th century.  This is a unique opportunity to discover the entire career of one of the 19^th century’s most emblematic yet least known masters.

 

Place: Irene Bartholomew apartment - 5, boulevard Saint-Martin 75003 Paris. 2nd floor (building code: 13A57 and Bartholomew/Schacherer bell)

Métro:  République (Lines 3,5, 8, 9, 11 - closest exit 5: Boulevard St Martin). 

Time: 10 am for coffee and tea, lecture begins promptly at 10:30 am.

Fee: 27 € (or reduced fee for series, please below)

 

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Thursday 2 April 12:15 noon – 1:45 pm

Turner – Paintings and Watercolors from the Collection of the Tate Gallery

Visit to the exhibition at the Musée Jacquemart-André (13 March – 20 July 2020) with Chris Boïcos.

 

This a major retrospective of the oeuvre of Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) organized with exceptional loans - 60 watercolors and 10 oil paintings - from the Tate Gallery, London. Turner is undoubtedly the greatest representative of the Golden Age of English watercolor, experimenting with the effects of light and transparency on English landscape but also the lagoons of Venice.  Apart from his finished works intended for sale, Turner kept a considerable collection of works for himself, which were kept in his house and studio. These were more expressive and experimental, and certainly closer to nature than those he painted for the public. In 1856, after the artist’s death, an enormous collection of works was bequeathed to the British nation, comprising many oil paintings, unfinished studies, and sketches, as well as thousands of works executed on paper: watercolors, drawings, and sketchbooks. Now held in Tate Britain, the collection highlights the incredible modernity of the great Romantic painter. The exhibition will display part of this private collection, which provides illuminating perspectives about Turner’s mindset, and imagination. These more private and spontaneous works are shown alongside various finished watercolors and oils to illustrate their influence on Turner’s public pictures.

 

Place: Musée Jacquemart-André, 158 boulevard Haussmann 75008. Meet outside main entrance. 

Métro: Miromesnil (lines 9, 13).

Time: Meet 11:50 for 12:15 am entry. Please bring 15 € in for exhibition ticket and 2 € for the headphones (17 €  total) in exact change.

This tour is limited to 20 participants and we need to be on time as we will not be admitted after our slot.

Fee: 27 € (or reduced fee for series, please below)

 

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Thursday 23 April 10:30 – 12 noon

Giorgio de Chirico – Metaphysical Painting

Slide lecture on the exhibition at the Musée de l’Orangerie (1 April – 13 July 2020) with Chris Boïcos.

 

Born in Greece where his father worked as a railway engineer, de Chirico (1888-1978) absorbed, as a youth, classical culture, alongside his younger brother, also an artist, Alberto Savinio. As an art student in Munich from 1908, he also came under the spell of German Romanticism, the writings of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer as well as the works of Böcklin and Klinger. After travelling to Milan and Florence, he settled in Paris in 1911, where he encountered the latest modern revolutionary styles of art, notably Cubism. He was quickly noticed by the key writers and critics of the time, Guillaume Apollinaire, Maurice Raynal, André Salmon, André Breton, Paul Éluard and Jean Paulhan who were the first to take an interest in and promote his work. His first art dealer was the influential Paul Guillaume, whose collection is today housed at the Musée de l’Orangerie.  After the outbreak of war he returned to Italy in 1915 with Savinio, where the two brothers were drafted in Ferrara. There they met and had a great impact on the artists Carlo Carrà and Giorgio Morandi. The “Metaphysical Style” that de Chrio developed in the years between 1911 and 1918 is the theme of the current exhibition. The dream-like spaces with odd classical fragments, Renaissance arcades, skewed perspectives and tailors’ dummies of this period proved to have an immense influence on the development of Surrealist space in the later works of Ernst, Magritte and Dali among many others.

 

Place: Irene Bartholomew apartment - 5, boulevard Saint-Martin 75003 Paris. 2nd floor (building code: 13A57 and Bartholomew/Schacherer bell)

Métro:  République (Lines 3,5, 8, 9, 11 - closest exit 5: Boulevard St Martin). 

Time: 10 am for coffee and tea, lecture begins promptly at 10:30 am.

Fee: 27 € (or reduced fee for series, please below)

 

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Thursday 30 April 10:30 – 12 noon

Albrecht Aldorfer

Slide lecture on the exhibition at the Musée du Louvre (23 April – 3 August 2020) with Chris Boïcos.

 

Painter, draftsman, and printmaker active in Regensburg, Albrecht Altdorfer (about 1480–1538) was a major artist of the German Renaissance, equal in many ways in stature to the far-better known Albrecht Dürer. Along with Lucas Cranach and Wolf Huber he is regarded to be the main representative of the Danube Schoool and known for setting biblical and historical subjects against landscape backgrounds of vivid color as well as for his exquisite and intricate engravings.Nevertheless, the artist remains little known compared to other masters of his generation. This mainly monographic exhibition aims to demonstrate the rich diversity of Albrecht Altdorfer’s body of work. He was prolifically inventive both in form and choice of subject and a pioneer of the landscape and architectural genres. The exhibition will emphasize his status as a Renaissance artist – at once highly original and thoroughly aware of the work of his contemporaries.

 

Place: Irene Bartholomew apartment - 5, boulevard Saint-Martin 75003 Paris. 2nd floor (building code: 13A57 and Bartholomew/Schacherer bell)

Métro:  République (Lines 3,5, 8, 9, 11 - closest exit 5: Boulevard St Martin). 

Time: 10 am for coffee and tea, lecture begins promptly at 10:30 am.

Fee: 27 € (or reduced fee for series, please below)

 

Course Fee:  176€ for 8 sessions, 161€ for 7 sessions, 144€ for 6 sessions, 125 € for 5 sessions, or 27 € per session.

Museum fees are additional to course fees. The fee reductions are only for the bimonthly series and cannot be applied to future programs.

You can sign up for individual sessions or a series by sending an email to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

or by calling Chris Boïcos on +33 (0) 686 58 98 09 and by sending a check made out to “Chris Boïcos” to Chris Boïcos, chez Charles & Compagnie, 15 rue Ambroise Thomas 75009 Paris. Museum fees are additional to course fees.

Please register for classes in advance to ensure that group visits are not full.

 

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Coming up in May and June:

 

Thursday 7 May 10:30 – 12 noon

The Power of Drawing – Masterpieces from the Prat Collection (French drawings 1500-1900)

Slide lecture on the exhibition at the Petit Palais (24 March – 12 July 2020) with Chris Boïcos.

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Thursday 28 May 10:30 – 12 noon

Body and Soul – Renaissance Sculpture from Donatello to Michelangelo

Slide lecture on the exhibition at the Louvre (6 May – 17 Aug. 2020) with Chris Boïcos.

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Thursday 4 June 10:30 – 12 noon

Matisse

Slide lecture on the exhibition at the Centre Pompidou (13 May – 31 Aug. 2020) with Chris Boïcos.