James Gaston

Metropolitain

L'ile aux Cygnes

Monet & Manet 26 Oct 2021 Monet & Manet 26 Oct 2021 Paris --

36 years ago tomorrow, on 27 October 1985, five masked gunmen with pistols, threatening security and visitors, robbed the Musée Marmottan Monet of nine paintings. Among the stolen paintings was Monet's Impression, Soleil Levant (photo below), the painting from which the Impressionism movement took its name. Five years later a tip-off led to the arrest in Japan of a yakuza gangster and the recovery of the stolen works, which were stored in a villa in Corsica.

Today we visited the Musée Marmottan Monet. Thankfully the only masked people in attendance were vaccinated art lovers (they check at the door). Originally a hunting lodge for a Duke, the museum is in a large home near the Bois de Boulogne, the park we visited earlier in the week. The home and its art collection were bequeathed to the Académie des Beaux-Arts, which became the Museum Marmottan in 1934. The museum is known for its collection of paintings by Claude Monet (1840-1926). In addition to its permanent collection, the museum is currently showing a collection of works by the impressionist Julie Manet (1878-1966).

Jason Farago in the NYTimes (19 August 2023) has an article on the artist Berthe Morisot who, Farago claims, may be the most underestimated of all the Impressionists. Farago takes a look at her painting In England (Eugene Manet on the Isle of Wight) which you can see at the Muse Marmottan.