Lost and Found: Art from Paris
There is good news (with a California connection) and bad news in the world of art tonight. Regrettably, the art that is lost is not the art that is found.
I’ll give you the bad news first.
Thieves have stolen five paintings from the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, France that are worth just a little less than 100 million euros ($123.7 million). The paintings include the works of Picasso, Matisse, Georges Braque, Ferdinand Leger, and Amedeo Modigliani.
Although the mayor’s office, the museum, and the police all refused to let CNN know the paintings that were stolen, they were identified by the French media as:
“… ‘Le Pigeon aux Petits Pois‘ (Pigeon <sic Dove> with peas) by Picasso, ‘La Pastorale‘ (The Pastoral) by Matisse, ‘L’Olivier pres de l’Estaque‘ (Olive Tree near the Estaque) by Braque, ‘La femme a l’eventail‘ (Woman with Fan) by Modigliani, and ‘Nature morte aux chandeliers‘ (Still Life with Candlesticks) by Léger.”
There are three people in the museum at all times, but the security system at the museum had been disabled.
The good news…?
For those who can travel to the de Young museum (photo above) in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, that is….
Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay on the “Left Bank” of the Seine in Paris can be found at the de Young in TWO special exhibitions. The first exhibition, Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay, opens on May 22 and runs through September 6, 2010. Nearly 100 magnificent works by famous masters who called France their home during the mid-to-late 19th century are presented. Public radio station KQED has THIS to say about the exhibition:
Notable works in this exhibition include:
- The Fife Player by Edouard Manet (1866)
- Racehorses Before the Stands by Edgar Degas (1866–1868)
- Family Reunion by Frédéric Bazille (1867)
- The Magpie by Claude Monet (1868)
- The Cradle by Berthe Morisot (1872)
- The Dancing Lesson by Edgar Degas (1873–1876)
- The Floor Scrapers by Gustave Caillebotte (1875)
- The Swing by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1876)
- Red Roofs, Corner of the Village, Winter Effect by Camille Pissarro (1877)
- Saint-Lazare Station by Claude Monet (1877)
- Rue Montorgueil, Paris. Festival of June 30, 1878 by Claude Monet (1878)
- Snow at Louveciennes by Alfred Sisley (1878)
- L’Estaque by Paul Cézanne (1878–1879)
- Portraits at the Stock Exchange by Edgar Degas (1878–1879)
- The Birth of Venus by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1879)
A slideshow of works from this exhibition can be seen at the KTVU site.
A companion exhibition, “Impressionist Paris, City of Light,” will run at the Palace of the Legion of Honor (1; photo above) in San Francisco’s Lincoln Park from June 5 to September 26, 2010. Paris earned the nickname La Ville-Lumière—“the City of Light” during the 19th century with the proliferation of gas lamps that turned night into day. Paris became the cultural capital of Europe, with authors, composers, and especially visual artists – painters, sculptors, printmakers, and photographers making Paris their home.
-Bill at
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