Il pleut dans ma chambre

Il pleut dans mon coeur

Douce pluie de Septembre

Chante un air moquer.

(Charles Trenet – Il pleut dans ma chambre)

I generally begin my posts with part of a song that runs through my head the day I write about.  Music is a huge part of my life and my playlist is varied.  I am a big fan of Charles Trenet, a French singer and songwriter of the jazzy dancehall 1930’s.  You are probably saying “Who?” But, if you have watched movies like French Kiss or Skyfall, you will have heard his music.  It is interesting to note that Trenet only recorded his own music and I find his lyrics to be quite witty and poignant.  The title of my post comes from his song “Il pleut dans ma chambre” and it vividly expresses how it feels to navigate the floodwaters of people at The Louvre”.

I know this sounds like a contradiction.  I am not a fan of the Louvre but everyone should have a chance to visit it once in their lifetime.  We chose to go again because our oldest child Sarah requested the visit as part of our Paris itinerary.  Her dream is to be a Parisian artist one day, have a flat near Sorbonne and have commissions enough to pay the rent and afford her enough to eat a baguette sandwich and crèpe every day.   Shhh, everyone has dreams.  She struggles with hands, feet and the basic differences between men and women and wanted to have a chance to go to photograph sculpted body parts as reference for her own work.  There is no better place than the Louvre to reference bare anatomy.

Even as a little girl of four and five years old she would sprawl on the floor of the Richelieu wing with her coloured pencils and sketch pad and draw Coustou’s Marley horses.  Fellow art enthusiasts would stop and watch her draw, take a pic and comment on how good her form and line were.  Today we focussed our effort on Italian sculpture in the Denon wing.

I love this statue of Eros amd Psyche.  I tried to imagine how Canova sculpted this in the late 1700’s and I also tried to imagine what a difficult time the models would have had holding that pose.  The passion and beauty of this sculpture makes me want to weep.

Anyhow, Trenet’s song was in my mind today as we tried to navigate and dodge the hords of people.  It’s vraiment fou trying to get past the Winged Victory of Samothrace because of the hundreds of people on the stairs trying to get a selfie and a shot of the statue.  We won’t even talk about Mona Lisa.   I guess we have become spoiled in the last couple of years not having to deal with busloads of tourists.

After a lovely lunch at Café Marley we headed to the l’Orangerie which is home to Monets Nymphèas series of paintings.  A quiet intimate museum with a delightful assortment impressionist and post-impressionist artworks by Renoir, Modigliani and Cézanne.

We rounded out our day at Stohrer and headed home to deal with homework amd journals.

Bisous!!!