All By Myself

On my way to the Musee d'Orsay.

I'm not sure I have the literary capacity to describe my feelings in this picture.  The sunglasses hide the bags and despair in my eyes that comes from 50 days of almost 24 hour contact with three kids.  Yes, Chris and I went out one night for a couple of hours and yes, the kids went to a movie one afternoon.  Occasionally Chris and I will run to get groceries (across the street) and leave Isaac in charge for a few minutes.  My rough estimate is that out of the approximately 1200 hours we've been in Paris, I've been away from the kids for about 10 hours.  I'd almost be willing to include the hours we are asleep, but Libby's diabetes has been so bad that we've been up checking her blood sugar every night (so that doesn't count).

I'm not trying to complain.  I am living in Paris and it is worth the small sacrifices that we've had to make.  I'm simply trying to give context for my excitement at having a 3 hour break.  I walked (alone!) to the Orsay museum and met the art history students for their class.  I have really enjoyed the limited time we've spent in the art history class.  I don't know anything about art history and I find it fascinating to learn the background of the paintings and have a greater understanding of the methods and context.    

We learned a lot about Gustave Courbet.  Courbet was a 19th century French painter who led the Realist movement.  We spent a lot of time with the painting (below) A Burial at Ornans.  I wouldn't have given this painting much thought on my own and certainly wouldn't have understood its importance as a turning point in 19th century French art.

We compared these two paintings of gleaners.  I was familiar with Millet's The Gleaners, and visually I prefer it to Beton's Calling in the Gleaners, but I wouldn't have understood the social and political context.  After learning about them, I like Millet's even more.

Jean-Francois Millet

Jules Breton

We learned about Courbet's influence on Manet as shown in this painting (below).

Portrait of M. and Mme Manet

We also saw some more risque paintings which was interesting with a group of young BYU students.

On my walk home I stopped and bought a baguette (in French!).  It was a great afternoon.  I enjoyed the peaceful walk alone and the chance to use my brain for something other than 7th grade math (which I am really good at BTW).