To sign up for classes please  This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it  or call + 33 (0) 686 58 98 09 

 

Paris Art Studies – September - October 2019

 

Paris Temporary Exhibitions 

 

Thursday 12 September 10:30 – 12 noon:

Berthe Morisot (1841-1895)

Slide lecture on the exhibition on at the Musée d’Orsay (until22 September 2019)with Chris Boïcos.

 

Berthe Morisot was one of the founding members of the Impressionist group in 1874 and its only female member until Mary Cassatt began exhibiting with the group later in the decade. Her great early mentor in modern painting was Edouard Manet whom she met at the Louvre in 1868 and whose brother, Eugène, she would later marry in 1874. Her career ended tragically early, when she died of pneumonia caught while nursing her beloved only daughter Julie in 1895. As an upper middle-class lady of her time her freedom of movement was much more limited than that of her male colleagues, so that the places and subjects she could paint were far fewer. Yet paint she did all her life, at first declining to marry until she could find a husband who respected her vocation and then taking time off from her duties as wife, mother and housekeeper to represent with sensitivity and poetry the often claustrophobic world and emotions of captive young women and girls of her class, daydreaming in Paris interiors, parks and country gardens. More than half of the pictures in the current show come from private collections and have not been shown in France for more than a hundred years. In our lecture we will examine the evolution of Morisot’s art and also her intimate relationships with her family and other artists, notably Manet and Renoir.

 

Place: Chris Boïcos apartment. 14, boulevard Saint-Martin 75010 Paris. 6th floor (building code: 69168)

Métros: Strasbourg-Saint Denis, exit 3: Porte Saint-Martin (lines 4, 8, 9) or République exit 6: rue René Boulanger (lines 8, 9 - fewer steps). 

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

Fee: 24 € (or reduced fee for 3 or 4 sessions, please see below)

 

____________________________________________________________________________________

 

Thursday 19 September 4:45 – 18:15 pm: 

The Golden Age of British Painting – Masterpieces from Tate Britain

Visit to the exhibition at the Musée du Luxembourg (11Sep. 2019 – 15 Jan. 2020) with Chris Boïcos.

 

This is the greatest exhibition in a long time in France of the stars of British painting from the founding  of the Royal Academy of Art in 1768 to the beginning of the Romantic periodin the 1820s. Celebrated portraits by the first president of the Academy, Sir Joshua Reynoldsand his rival, Thomas Gainsborough, define the rise of the upper classes of Britain at the beginning of colonial expansion, the “Grand Tour” and the founding of the British Empire. John Hoppner, William Beechey and Thomas Lawrencefurther contribute to the evolution of the British portrait at the turn of the 19^thcentury by introducing an increasingly free and flowing painterly manner in their art - in opposition to European Neoclassicism - that will greatly inspire the Romantic School.  George Stubbsand George Morland are also showcased as the depicters of a typically British taste for country life and horses. The exhibition ends with the shift to more eccentric, personal and exalted artistic visions at the dawning of the Romantic age in the works of Henri Fuseli, John Martin and J.M.W. Turner. This is a unique opportunity to discover in France, on the eve of Brexit (!), some of the finest paintings of the era from the collections of the most prestigious museum of British art.

 

Place: Outside entrance of Musée du Luxembourg – 19 rue de Vaugirard 75006. 

Métro : St Sulpice (line 4) or Odéon (lines 4 and 6).

Time: 4:20 for 4:45 pm entry. Please bring 16 € for the exhibition ticket and 2€ for the headphones (18 € total) in exact change.

_____________________________________________________________________________

 

Thursday 26 September 10:15 – 12 noon:

TheAlana Collection – Masterpieces of Italian Painting

Visit to the exhibition at the Musée Jacquemart-André (13 Sep. 2019 – 20 Jan. 2020) with Chris Boïcos.

 

The Alana Collection is one of the most precious and little-known private collections of Renaissance art in the world, currently located in the United States. Complementing the museum’s own collection of Italian Renaissance art, 75 masterpiecesby the greatest Italian masters - Lorenzo Monaco, Fra Angelico, Uccello, Lippi, Bellini, Carpaccio, Tintoretto, Veronese, Bronzino, and Gentileschi– from the Alana collection are on show to the general public for the first time. In the tradition of all the greatest American collections, the Alana Collection is the fruit of a passion for art and an intensive selection process, adopted over several decades by Alvaro Saiehand Ana Guzmán; the combination of the couple’s first names make up the name of the Alana Collection. Beginning with a veritable passion for Italian Gothic and Renaissance art, the couple have evolved over the years to a taste for 16^thand 17^thcentury painters as well. Their collection provides one of the best comprehensive overviews of Italian art from the Gothic to the Caravaggesque periods still in private hands.

 

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

Métro:Miromesnil (lines 9, 13).

Time: Meet at 10 for 10:15 am entry. Please bring 14,50 € for exhibition ticket and 2 € for the headphones 

(16,50 €  total) in exact change. 20 participants maximum.

_____________________________________________________________________________

 

Tuesday 1 October 10:30 – 12 noon and Thursday 3 October 10:30 – 12 noon

Francis Bacon - Books and Painting

Slide lecture on the exhibition on at the Centre Georges Pompidou (11 Sep. 2019 – 20 Jan. 2020) with Chris Boïcos.

 

The last major French exhibition of Francis Bacon – probably the most celebrated British artist of the 20^thcentury - was held at the Centre Pompidou in 1996. The current show concentrates on Bacon’s later careerand covers the period from 1971, the year of his famous retrospective exhibition at the Grand Palais, to his final works in 1992. The curator, Didier Ottinger, has decided to focus on the influence of literaturein Francis Bacon’s painting based on the books found in his personal library. The varied visions of Nietzsche, Georges Bataille, T.S. Eliot, Aeschylus, Joseph Conrad and Michel Leiris shared in many ways the same amoral and realist view of the world as Bacon - a concept of art liberated from idealism and beauty. Bacon’s later style was marked by simplification and intensification. His colors acquired new depth, drawn from a unique chromatic register of yellow, pink and saturated orange. 1971 was a turning point for the artist. The exhibition at the grand Palais earned him international acclaim, while the suicide of his partner, just a few days before the exhibition opened, gave way to a period marked by guilt with a proliferation of symbolic and mythological forms reminiscent of the classical Furies invading his work. The ‘Black’ Triptychs painted in memory of his dead lover (In Memory of George Dyer, 1971, Triptych–August 1972 and Triptych, May–June 1973), all presented at the exhibition, commemorate his loss. In our lecture we will examine the 60 paintings(including 12 triptychs, in addition to a series of portraits and self-portraits) from major private and public collections in the show and link them also to the artist’s earlier history and personal and artistic relationships.

 

Place: Chris Boïcos apartment. 14, boulevard Saint-Martin 75010 Paris. 6th floor (building code: 69168)

Métros: Strasbourg-Saint Denis, exit 3: Porte Saint-Martin (lines 4, 8, 9) or République exit 6: rue René Boulanger (lines 8, 9 - fewer steps). 

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

Fee: 24 € (or reduced fee for 3 or 4 sessions, please see below)

_____________________________________________________________________________

 

Tuesday 8 October 10:30 – 12 noon and Thursday 10 October 10:30 –12 noon:

Degas at the Opera

Slide lecture on the exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay (24 Sep. 2019 – 19 Jan. 2020) with Chris Boïcos.

 

The greatest painter of the figure, particularly the female figure, among the Impressionist painters was undoubtedly Edgar Degas. His lifelong study of the dancers at the Opera in their rehearsal rooms or on stage began in 1870 and the resulting paintings, drawings and pastels have remained probably his most famous works. The current exhibition organized in collaboration with the Opera Garnier, however, goes beyond the image of the danseuseto focus on Degas profound and variegated connections with musicians, composers, ballet masters, classical music, the dancers’ families, spectators and the social world of the 19^thcentury Paris Opera. This unique exhibition underlines the immense importance the Opera had for the evolution of the painter’s artistic vision. It is not without reason that Degas called it his personal “toolbox”.

 

Place: Chris Boïcos apartment. 14, boulevard Saint-Martin 75010 Paris. 6th floor (building code: 69168)

Métros: Strasbourg-Saint Denis, exit 3: Porte Saint-Martin (lines 4, 8, 9) or République exit 6: rue René Boulanger (lines 8, 9 - fewer steps). 

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

Fee: 24 € (or reduced fee for 3 or 4 sessions, please see below)

_____________________________________________________________________________

 

Thursday 17 October 10:30 am – 12 noon

Toulouse-Lautrec – Resolutely Modern

Slide lecture on the exhibition at the Grand Palais (9Oct. 2019 – 24 Jan. 2020) with Chris Boïcos.

This is the first major exhibition of the artist in France since the great Grand Palais retrospective of 1992. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was in many ways the last great realist painter of 19^thcentury Paris. His extraordinary drawing skills and sharp, observant eye made him the great visual chronicler of Belle Epoque Paris and particularly the popular dancers, singers and actors of Paris show businessand the lurid night lifeof the Montmartre boulevards. Yet his vision also combined sympathy for the often down-and-out characters he depicted, a deep understanding of their psychology and the toughness of their existence with an extraordinary and still fresh sense of ironic humor. His was, in the end, a deeply humanist vision which he shares with the greatest literary observers of 19^thcentury Paris life, Balzac, Baudelaire or Maupassant. Many of the artist’s best paintings and most of his famous etchings and posters are part of this not-to-be missed exhibition.

 

Place: Chris Boïcos apartment. 14, boulevard Saint-Martin 75010 Paris. 6th floor (building code: 69168)

Métros: Strasbourg-Saint Denis, exit 3: Porte Saint-Martin (lines 4, 8, 9) or République exit 6: rue René Boulanger (lines 8, 9 - fewer steps). 

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

Fee: 24 € (or reduced fee for 3 or 4 sessions, please see below)

_____________________________________________________________________________

 

Course Fee:  154 € for 7 sessions, 138 € 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, 14 boulevard Saint-Martin 75010 Paris. Museum fees are additional to course fees.

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

 

____________________________________________________________________________________

 

Coming up in November/December:

 

Thursday 7 November 10:40 am – 12:15 pm

Mondrian – As Figurative Painter

Visit to the exhibition at the Musée Marmottan (12 Sep.2019 – 26 Jan. 2020) with Chris Boïcos.

 

Thursday 14 November 10:30 am – 12 noon

Leonardo da Vinci

Slide lecture on the exhibition at the Musée du Louvre (24 Oct.2019 – 24 Feb. 2020) with Chris Boïcos.

 

Thursday 21 November 10:30 – 12 noon: 

Félix Fénéon (1861-1944). New Times: From Seurat to Matisse

Visit to the exhibition at the Musée du quai de Branly (until28 September 2019) with Chris Boïcos.

 

The Musée d’Orsay, the Musée de l’Orangerie and the musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac are joining forces to organize the first exhibition paying tribute to Félix Fénéon (1861-1944), a crucial figure in the artistic world of Paris in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Anarchist, art critic, editor, gallery director and collector, Fénéon espoused an open-minded vision of creation at a time when art was on the verge of the shift to modernity.The exhibition focuses on Fénéon’s remarkable collectionand evokes his investigation of Art from Remote Places an essaypublished in 1920, questioning the status of primitive sculptures and objects.A promoter of Neo-Impressionism, Fénéon passionately advocated the works of his Pointillist friends, Seuratand Signac. He was also an active member of the famous La Revue Blanchecircle of the Art Nouveauperiod before pledging his support to the Fauvists and Futurists in 1906, and particularly in 1912 when he organized the first Futurist exhibitionin Paris as artistic director of the Bernheim-Jeune gallery.

 

Place: Chris Boïcos apartment. 14, boulevard Saint-Martin 75010 Paris. 6th floor (building code: 69168)

Métros: Strasbourg-Saint Denis, exit 3: Porte Saint-Martin (lines 4, 8, 9) or République exit 6: rue René Boulanger (lines 8, 9 - fewer steps). 

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

Fee: 24 € (or reduced fee for 3 or 4 sessions, please see below)

_______________________________________________________

 

December (date be confirmed, 10:30-12 noon)

Luca Giordano

Slide lecture the exhibition at the Petit Palais (14 Nov.2019 – 23 Feb. 2020) with Chris Boïcos.

 

November/ December (date and time to be confirmed)

El Greco Retrospective

Visit to the exhibition at the Grand Palais (16 Oct.2019 – 10 Feb. 2020) with Chris Boïcos.

 

November/ December (date and time to be confirmed)

Toulouse-Lautrec – Resolutely Modern

Visit to the exhibition at the Grand Palais (9 Oct. 2019 – 24 Jan. 2020) with Chris Boïcos.

 

 

Myths and Legends, Gods and Lovers in Art

 

This new course in Paris Art Studies introduces us to the major legendary classical characters – gods, goddesses, heroes and lovers – who beginning with the Greeks in the 6^thcentury BC to their rediscovery during the Renaissance and all the way to modern times, mark with their persistent presence the iconography and symbolism of Western art. Find out who Venus, Cupid, Diana, Apollo, Bacchus, Jupiter, Juno, Hercules, Semele, Endymion, Europa, Hermaphrodite, Ariadne and many more mythical figures are and how they have been used time and again by the greatest painters and sculptors of the history of art to represent human passions and foibles in all their intensity or lightheartedness in tragic and comic pictures and sculptures. Our course will cover ancient Greek and Roman art, the Renaissance, the Baroque Age, the 18^thand 19^thcenturies as well as the Modern period and many of the greatest artists of all time from Praxiteles to Picasso. We will be visiting the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay and Gustave Moreau museums in Paris.

 

Wednesday 18 September 10:30 - 12 noon 

The Birth of Venus

Slide lecture with Chris Boïcos.

 

Goddess of Beauty, Love and Fecundity Aphrodite/Venus became the classical prototype of female beauty for centuries to come when first carved as a cult statue by the Greek sculptor Praxiteles in Knidos in the 4^thcentury BC. We will trace her history though time from her birth, most famously painted by Sandro Botticelli, but also numerous other artists from Boucher to Ingres, to her tragic passion for the beautiful Adonis (Titian) her sensuous relationship with the God of War, Mars (Veronese) and her cynical use of her ugly husband, Vulcan (Boucher). We will also see how her image is complexified and enriched as it is recycled into modern life and art in the work of later masters like Manet, Picasso or Tom Wesselmann.

 

Place: Chris Boïcos apartment. 14, boulevard Saint-Martin 75010 Paris. 6th floor (building code: 69168)

Métros: Strasbourg-Saint Denis, exit 3: Porte Saint-Martin (lines 4, 8, 9) or République exit 6: rue René Boulanger (lines 8, 9 - fewer steps). 

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

Fee: 24 € (or reduced fee for 3 or 4 sessions, please see below)

 

 

 

Wednesday 25 September 10:30 - 12 noon 

Apollo and the Lyre

Slide lecture with Chris Boïcos.

 

The son of Leto and Zeus, god of Light and the Arts, belong to the second generation of the Olympian gods. Apollo’s connections to the Sun, Music, his struggle with Python or the birth of his daughters, the Muses, harbingers of the first human civilization, have led to an endless stream of images and symbolism in art whose evolutions and meanings we will examine in ancient art as well as in the works of Raphael, Poussin, Bernini, Ribera and many more. We will see how Apollo comes to stand as symbol of superior civilization and enlightenment in opposition to the earthy and dark forces of the nature gods and Bacchus.

 

Place: Chris Boïcos apartment. 14, boulevard Saint-Martin 75010 Paris. 6th floor (building code: 69168)

Métros: Strasbourg-Saint Denis, exit 3: Porte Saint-Martin (lines 4, 8, 9) or République exit 6: rue René Boulanger (lines 8, 9 - fewer steps). 

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

Fee: 24 € (or reduced fee for 3 or 4 sessions, please see below)

 

Wednesday 2 October 10:30 - 12 noon 

Gods, Goddesses and their Passions in Greek and Roman Art

Visit to the Musée du Louvre with Chris Boïcos.

 

In our first visit to the Louvre we will examine the first appearance of the Olympian gods and demi-gods in art as cult statues and the prototypes in appearance, features and proportions that came to characterize them in Greek art, constantly copied with variations into the Roman age. We will analyze the specific concepts associated with Zeus, Hera, Apollo, Athena, Artemis or Dionysus and see how they come to define basic principles about human character, desires and aspirations. Among the masterpieces we will study are Praxiteles’ Aphrodite of Knidos, Hermaphrodite, the Hercules metopes from Olympia and of course the incontounableVenus of Milo.

 

Place: Meet by the auditorium entrance inside Louvre Pyramid. 

Métro: Palais-Royal- Musée du Louvre  (lines 1,7).

Time: 10:15 am for 10:30 start. Please buy your own exhibition ticket on line or even better an annual museum card. Best way in is through the group entrance in the Passage Richelieu between the rue de Rivoli and the Pyramid: use path to the left of the group line by showing your ticket or Louvre card to the guard.

Time: 10:15 am for 10:30 start. Please buy your own exhibition ticket on line or even better an annual museum card. Best way in is through the group entrance in the Passage Richelieu between the rue de Rivoli and the Pyramid: use path to the left of the group line by showing your ticket or Louvre card to the guard.

 

Wednesday 9 October 10:30 - 12 noon 

Jupiter, his Wife and Girlfriends 

Slide lecture with Chris Boïcos.

 

The greatest literary source for the stories of love from antiquity is Ovid’s great poem in 15 books, the Metamorphoses,where the legends of the Greek gods and their lovers were set down in Latin in the first century AD. Among these legends the most famous are the affairs of Zeus/Jupiter whose constant picturesque transformations into a variety of animals, birds or substances when meeting his mortal girlfriends in order to escape the jealous eye of his wife Hera/Juno, proved irresistible to artists through the centuries. We will examine Jupiter’s scrapes and their symbolism though the eyes of Correggio, Titian, Rubens, Boucher, Ingres, Moreau and more.

 

 

Place: Chris Boïcos apartment. 14, boulevard Saint-Martin 75010 Paris. 6th floor (building code: 69168)

Métros: Strasbourg-Saint Denis, exit 3: Porte Saint-Martin (lines 4, 8, 9) or République exit 6: rue René Boulanger (lines 8, 9 - fewer steps). 

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

Fee: 24 € (or reduced fee for 3 or 4 sessions, please see below)

 

 

Wednesday 16 October 10:30 - 12 noon 

The Olympian Gods and their Passions in Italian Renaissance and Baroque Art

Visit to the Musée du Louvre with Chris Boïcos.

 

In our second visit to the Louvre we will examine the rediscovery of the ancient myths by the Renaissance and Baroque artists in Italy. The stories of the gods became key subjects for the cultivated and classically educated aristocratic patrons of Italian artists of the 16^thand 17^thcenturies. An influential market for mythology in art was created to meet a new taste for literature but also sensuality and the nude, as well as refined decoration for the new palaces and villas of wealthy art patrons. We will see how mythical figures are used in a variety of artworks by Botticelli, Mantegna, Titian, Veronese, Reni and more and to what precise symbolic or decorative purpose.

 

Place: Meet by the auditorium entrance inside Louvre Pyramid. 

Métro: Palais-Royal- Musée du Louvre  (lines 1,7).

Time: 10:15 am for 10:30 start. Please buy your own exhibition ticket on line or even better an annual museum card. Best way in is through the group entrance in the Passage Richelieu between the rue de Rivoli and the Pyramid: use path to the left of the group line by showing your ticket or Louvre card to the guard.

___________________________________________________________________________

 

Course Fee:  120 € 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, 14 boulevard Saint-Martin 75010 Paris. Museum fees are additional to course fees.

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

 

________________________________________________________________________________

 

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, 14 boulevard Saint-Martin 75010 Paris. Museum fees are additional to course fees.

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