Les Femmes du Jardin des Tuileries

As I have told many of you, I walk several mornings a week in the Jardin des Tuileries as part of my exercise routine. There are not many women--particularly my age!--who exercise there in the mornings. There are an increasing number of runners now that the weather has gotten nicer. It is a wonderful place to walk--I go around 9am so that I am finished by 10 am and not in the midst of hordes of tourists--although I know that I must be a number of Tuileries pictures taken home to Japan!
Les Jardins des Tuileries have been restored recently although their layout as designed by Le Notre (he also designed the gardens at Versailles) is mostly unchanged. There are flower beds, gardens, and a collection of magnificent statues throughout the garden. (daffodils, crocus, hellebores in bloom, magnolia buds swelling!)
"Les Femmes", as I have come to call them, are a collection of nudes by Aristide Maillol. As I walk by and around them many mornings, I have developed a great interest in them--they are wonderful. There are other sculptures as well by Henry Miller, Rodin and others as well as some more classical style pieces throughout the gardens. However, I find that the Maillol collection has a presence and impact that is almost a structural part of the garden. They evoke emotion and their larger than life size draws you to them. They do not disappear into the landscape.
I have thought a lot about why I am so drawn to them. I have decided that they display physical strength and strength of being.

My inspiration for more information came as I walked among these women Wednesday morning, which was sunny and with a winter bright blue sky. I did not know anything about the artist, Aristide Maillol but I have great internet access!
I discovered that the woman who was the model for many of these had created a foundation and museum --Musee Maillol on one of the streets right across the Seine from where we live. It is on a street, Rue Grenelle, that I walk by on the way to Alliance Francais where I am taking French. The museum is diagonally across the street from David's favorite wine shop!(I guess we never looked past the wine in the window!) Since I did not have a three hour French class on Wednesday, I visited the museum.

The museum and the foundation were started by Dina Vierny who was the model for many of his sculptures. It is a former 18th century convent that has been both historically renovated and re-designed to create exhibition space for the large pieces. The front of the building has a well known fountain created in the 1740's by Edme Bouchardon, "Fontaine des Quatre-Saisons".(His other famous piece, a statue of Louis XV was installed at Place de la Concorde, but taken down and destroyed during the Revolution.) The museum literature states that the museum contains all of Maillol's work plus the private collections of both Maillol and Dina Viernay which include drawings by Matisse, paintings by Picasso, Gaugin, Kandinsky and others. Maillol was friends with a number of these artists. I found this story amusing--
Matisse was recovering from surgery in the spring of 1941, he had cancer, and trying to get back to work. In the fall, Maillol sent Dina Viernay to him with the message " Je vous prete la vision de mon travail, vous la reduirez a une trait." Essentially -you can take the vision of my work and reduce it to a line"--and that is what Matisse did! There are some of his familiar line drawings of Dina with a bracelet, with raffia sandals!

I particularly enjoyed the number of sketches for Maillol's sculptures. There are also small clay models of many of them. He was interested in many forms of art-there are tapestries that he wove (he actually founded a workshop in Banyuls that was famous), clay vessels and water jugs that he made, and paintings. His subject matter is nearly always women. His sculptures are displayed mainly on the first floor. Dina Viernay collected many contemporary pieces after Maillol's death in 1944 (car accident) and remains the president of the foundation according to their website. My favorites of Maillol's "femmes" are those for which Dina was the model. She must have that "strength of being" that drew me to the figures in the gardens in that she not only inspired them artistically, she was also the force behind the creation of the museum and foundation.

The area where this museum is located is one of our favorites--it is an area inside the triangle created by Rue de Bac, Rue Grenelle and Boulevard Raspail. There is a fabulous poissionere--more fish and shellfish than I can identify! And in addition to the wine shop, a cheese shop that must have at least a hundred varieties of cheese.
Yesterday I bought "couers de chevre" for Valentine's Day!