Patrick Bade
Exploring the Marais, Part 1

Patrick Bade | Exploring the Marais, Part 1

- Well, we’re going to embark tonight on a three-week exploration of the Marais and its museums. Marais is one of the most picturesque and one of the most fascinating areas of Paris. It’s actually not one of the oldest. The city began on the Ile de la Cite on the Left Bank. And in the Middle Ages, the Marais, as it name suggests, was marshy land. So it was drained and it was developed in the late Middle Ages and the 16th century. And in the 17th century, it became the most fashionable area of Paris. And the very wealthy aristocrats and financiers, they built their town palaces. And most of those survive. They mostly date from the 17th, early 18th century. And then in this latter part of the 18th century, there was a kind of migration of fashionable people westward. So they went to the sixth, seventh, and eighth arrondissement, both sides of the Seine, but further west. And in the 19th century, the area declined. And these big palaces were turned into multiple occupancy workshops and apartments. So they were broken up. And it became a very heavily Jewish area with largely Jews from the East Ashkenazi. And so craftsmen, furriers, tailors, and so on, they moved into these palaces. And then by the end of the Second World War, it was something of a slum. The lady you can see here, many of you will remember, those of you who went to lectures at the London Jewish Cultural Centre, This is Trude Levi. She was Hungarian. And she survived Auschwitz and the death march. And she came to Paris, was her first stop after war before then going on to South Africa. I think probably a number of South African listeners will have known her as well. Wonderful, wonderful lady.

One of the dearest friends of my life. We were really kind of joined at the hip for a period of about 10 years. And we often talked about this time in Paris. And she lived on Rue des Blancs-Manteaux, which you can see here, which is now, I would say, one of the most desirable streets in Paris. It was outside my price range when I was looking for a flat in Paris seven years ago. But she says it was, all she remembered, was that it was verminous. There were mice, rats, cockroaches. And so, as I said, it was a pretty well a slum. And there were plans to flatten and redevelop the whole area. But the very influential Minister of Culture Andre Maurois, he decided otherwise. And he declared that it was a sector protege. And they decided very deliberately to make it into an important cultural area of Paris. And the old palaces, town palaces were restored and many were turned into museums. And we’re going to look at several of them over the next three weeks. So a good starting point actually is the Hotel de Sully. This was built in the 1620s for a wealthy financier. This is on Rue Saint-Antoine. And it’s now at the Centre for National Monuments, occasional exhibitions there. You can walk through it. And if you are in Paris on a lovely day, you can pick up something delicious to eat on the Rue Saint-Antoine. And you can walk into the courtyards and gardens and sit down. You can see how splendid it is. This is still the Hotel de Sully. And you can walk through it to arrive at the Place des Vosges that I’ll get to in a minute or so. This is the Hotel de Soubise. You can just see top left remnants of a late mediaeval palace that was on this spot.

But most of what you see is now from the Regence period. Regence is 1715 to 1723, during the Regency, in the childhood of Louis XV. And this is now the National Archives. And again, they do very interesting special exhibitions, but it’s worth going into anyway ‘cause it has these, a series of rooms, a suite of rooms that are considered to be the best example of the Regence style. So transitional style between the Baroque of Louis XIV and the Rococo of Louis XV. This is the Hotel Sale, 17th century. This is very Baroque, not at all Rococo or Louis XV. And this now houses the Musee Picasso, the greatest collection in the world of Picasso’s work. Most of what he owned when he died has arrived here. And that is, I will undoubtedly be devoting a session to that museum at a later date. So here is the Place des Vosges, was originally called the Place Royale. And this was built in the first decade of the 17th century in the reign of Henry IV. And I think it’s one of the loveliest spaces in Paris, maybe the most beautiful place in Paris. It’s very grand indeed as you can see. What you can’t really sense, I think, from the photos I’m showing you, is the scale of it. They really are absolutely enormous, very. And when you’ll get a sense of that, if you go visit the Maison de Victor Hugo, the great poet, he lived there from 1833 to the 1848 Revolution, in the southeast corner. And his apartment is on the upper floors. And it’s quite a climb. Let me warn you to get to it. Worth it. Fascinating, weird, weird, weird place.

Very eccentric, very eclectic. The furniture you are seeing is genuine mediaeval Renaissance furniture. Well, look at the chairs or 18th-century chairs. I think they’re English, actually, in the foreground. But the furniture, it’s all real mediaeval furniture that’s been chopped up and reconstituted to make furniture that was considered useful in the 19th century and year. An amazing mixture of Oriental and Islamic, and as well as mediaeval Renaissance, and so on. So we turn out of the Place des Vosges, and we soon arrive in the Rue des Rosiers. This is, of course, world-famous street once described as the beating heart of French Jewry. It’s not especially Jewish anymore. It’s become a little bit touristic. There are a lot of smart fashion shops and so on. But there are still a few traditional Jewish cafes. It’s been a street of great tragedy, of course. Most of the people who lived in it were, in the 1940s, were deported, and murdered by the Nazis. And this is one of these plaques that you actually see, many of them in the Marais, but actually all over Central Paris, dedicated to the the children who, you see them on every school really in Central Paris. And you can see, “To the memory of the children, pupils of this school deported in 1942, from 1942 to '44, because they happened to be born Jewish, innocent victims of Nazi barbarism with the complicity, the active complicity of the Vichy government.” I think it’s very interesting, the wording actually.

And I applaud the honesty of the declaration on that. And there’s another plaque on the Rue des Rosiers, commemorating a terrorist attack on the street in 1982. This is a kosher shop. I’ve visited that shop with Trudy. When she was staying in Paris, she used to pick up kosher salami from this shop as a present for a friend who liked it. I must say it smelled and looked very unappealing. So I was never really tempted to try it. This is Rue Pavee, just around the corner from Rue des Rosiers, with this very beautiful Art Nouveau, belated Art Nouveau, 'cause it’s actually 1913. By 1913, really, Art Nouveau style had passed. But this is by the most important French Art Nouveau architect and designer, Hector Guimard, whose wife was Jewish. And this is his final masterpiece as an architect. I went past it for years thinking, “Oh, I’d so love to see inside this building,” but it’s very difficult to get into synagogues in Paris for security reasons. And also, this is a particularly extreme orthodox sect to worship in this synagogue. I did manage it once. I was with a group of ladies from the London Jewish Cultural Centre, and there’s one very attractive, very charming, very persuasive lady.

And she talked to an old gentleman outside the synagogue and he managed to get us all in very briefly to see this interior. So that was the only time I’ve actually ever seen it. And just around the corner is a… On the Rue des Francs-Bourgeois, on the way to the museums, there is this church, it’s a 17th century church with a rather modest entrance on the Rue des Francs-Bourgeois. It’s a very standard 17th century French church. I don’t find the architecture particularly interesting. But when I have groups and I walk down that street, if it’s open, I always pop them into it to see the amazing pulpit. You can just see it on the right-hand side. Here it is. That is fantastic, isn’t it? When I first went and saw it, I really gasped. I thought, “Where am I? This is not France, this is not French.” And indeed it isn’t. It dates from the 1740s and its Bavarian. So how it got to Paris, I really don’t know. But it’s complete, it’s a very, very typical example of Bavarian Baroque, completely wildly over the top with St. Michael tramping over the devil on top of it. You’d have to give a very good sermon, I think, from that pulpit, because you’d be upstaged by the pulpit with exquisite craftsmanship. So this is the first museum that we’re going to visit. And this is the Musee Cognacq-Jay. It’s, again, it’s in the 17th century hotel particulier. It’s a private, was a palace, an aristocratic palace. It’s called the Hotel Donon. And in fact, the Cognacq-Jay family had nothing to do with this building. When the collection was put together in the early 20th century, it was left to the state. And it used to be on, when I first saw it in the 1970s, it was on the Boulevard des Capucines, close to the Opera.

But when they made this decision to turn the Marais into a museum area, that the collection was moved into this. It’s controversial. Not everybody thinks it was a good idea, but I think it works pretty well. I love it. Here is Monsieur Cognacq and Madame Jay, fiercesomely bourgeois and rather severe-looking. And they were the owners of one of the most successful department stores in Paris. And the building still exists, but it’s no longer a family business, That’s La Samaritaine, it’s down by the Seine. Actually not far from where the museum is now. And it’s had a revamp recently. It’s really a kind of, it’s still a department store, but really one of those stores that has different brand names using different parts of it. The exterior on the River Seine is Art Deco. But as you can see inside, it’s very, very spectacular Art Nouveau interior. So, you know, it’s well worth a visit walking through to wonder at the beauty of the interiors. Here’s the courtyard of the Cognacq-Jay, where you can sit and have a coffee. And we enter, and you go straightaway up this staircase with a very fine wrought iron, 18th century balustrade. We get to this, this is the first corridor we go along, and it’s got these showcases with small-scale late 18th century sculptures, mostly by the sculptor Clodion. So this is just pre-French Revolutions, rather sexy young lady with a wardrobe malfunction. Transitional, I would say, again, between Rococo and the Neoclassical. And you’ve heard me say many times about the drapery coming down. You can see it beginning to happen here, that it’s not as flattery and complex as it would be if it were Baroque or fully Rococo. And you can see how the material is clinging to the body underneath and defining it. And this charming, this is a monument to a much loved pet, wonderfully frivolous, you see, very ancien regime.

That’s by Clodion. Well, it’s a modello for a material that’s a rather better, sharper image of it. And along that corridor, we also have several paintings by the 18th century French painter, Hubert Robert. I picked this one out because it always amuses me. Hubert Robert went to Italy in the 1750s with his great mate Fragonard. And this was a time, say around 1750, we’ve got the birth of Neoclassicism that goes hand in hand with a renaissance of archaeology, you know, when the Italian Renaissance happened in the 15th century, everybody started measuring ancient buildings that they were digging for sculptures, digging for coins, for evidence of the ancient world. And there’s a, you can see Neoclassicism as a kind of second renaissance. Once again, people in reaction to Baroque and Rococo, they’re turning back to the classical world. They’re digging, in 1738, they find Herculaneum. In 1748, they find Pompeii. And so, and people on the Grand Tour are coming and looking at classical buildings. This shows a rather a dreadful accident. Somebody’s climbed a classical building, it looks like a triumphal arch to get close to the ornament and measure it. But you can see he’s coming to, he’s fallen off, and he’s coming to a sticky end. So at the end of that corridor, we come into this room, which retains its 18th century boiserie. Boiserie, wooden panelling. And when this photograph was taken, the Rembrandt in the collection, very important painting historically anyway, you can see it rather blurred at the end of this room. At the moment, it’s been moved to another room.

But what you have, so it’s a collection, well, rather like Wallace Collection, rather like the Frick, and the Jacquemart-Andre that I’m going to be talking about in a couple of weeks time. It’s very much wealthy taste of the time. So it mixes Old Master paintings, 18th century paintings and portraits, and 18th century French furniture and decorative arts. And in this room, in the vitrine, in the centre of the room, we have something that was very fashionable in the 18th century, and then once again, very fashionable in the Belle Epoque. And that is Chinese export porcelain, which was a big business, of course, in the 18th century, bringing this porcelain to Europe, it’s very much favoured. But what the the French did was they didn’t really just appreciate the porcelain as it was. They embellish it with gilt bronze mount. So you can see all these pieces. The porcelain itself is Chinese, but all the gilded parts, this is gilded, gilt bronze. And so, of course, for people who collect porcelain, who are particularly interested in porcelain and Chinese porcelain, these are ruined because drill holes have been made into the porcelain to attach the bronze mounts. So at Christie’s or Sotheby’s, when they sell this sort of thing, nowadays, they don’t put them into ceramic cells, they put them into furniture cells because ceramics collectors aren’t going to be interested in them. But people who like 18th century French furniture do like it. And in this room and elsewhere in the collection, we find exquisite examples of 18th-century French furniture. I’ll never forget one occasion when I was taking students round this museum, it must be 25, 30 years ago, I would think.

And another ex-student tagged along, my very, very dear friend Robin Miller. And she has talked to, dropped down a few times, she’s great, great expert on 18th-century French furniture. And she happened to be accompanying and listening to me. And then it may have been this very piece of furniture, it was a desk anyway, and so I just, I’d spoken about it, and I said to Robin, “Do you have anything to add?” And she launched into the most wonderful, the most fascinating explanation of this piece of furniture and how it was made, and so on, and the craftsmanship. And I was just amazed. And so I invited her, she practically, well, took over the rest of the tour. And that that was really a wonderful occasion. She’s, if you can get hold of her, she’s a great person to take you around a collection of 18th-century French furniture. This is a piece, where you can see a difference in style here, because this is really transitional between Louis XV and Louis XVI. You’ve still got the curvy cabriole legs. They’re leftover from Rococo and the Louis XV. But you can see it’s more symmetrical. And the decoration on it, the gilt bronze decoration is more or less classical. This is fully Louis XVI, this is Neoclassical. And it’s by one of the great ebenistes Adam Weisweiler. And it dates from about 1780. So shortly before the French Revolution. You can see all the curves have gone out. It’s completely straightened out. And this is the other room where you’ve got many pieces of very, very fine quality French furniture. Many people think this is the great age of furniture-making.

May or may not be to your taste. It’s not entirely to my taste, I must admit. I find it a bit too fussy. But the exquisite craftsmanship has never, ever been surpassed. And you have very, very specialised, by this point, in the second half of the 18th century, the furniture is extremely specialised with, for, you know, playing cards, for if it’s got a porcelain or a marble surface, it might be for drinking tea, coffee, hot chocolate. So very, very refined furniture. This is, in that room now, they currently have this painting by Rembrandt. And I would describe it as interesting. I mean, it’s not one of those Rembrandts that really is heart-stoppingly moving or beautiful. It’s a very early work. In fact, it is probably the very earliest surviving painting by Rembrandt before he went to Amsterdam, when he’s still in Leiden. And interestingly at this point, he’s already fascinated by the Jewish Bible. And I emphasise that as opposed to the Christian New Testament. And this is a story from the Jewish Bible of “Balaam and the Ass.” And Balaam was on a journey on this ass. And God sends an angel to stop him. Doesn’t want him to continue with the journey. And that’s what’s happening here. And he can’t see the angel, but the donkey can. But the donkey, I think it’s, I find it a rather hilarious picture. It’s got a kind of slightly Walt Disney quality to it that you can see the donkey is protesting because Balaam is urging it to continue, and the angel is telling him not to. It’s quite a small picture. And like all his work at the beginning of his career, it’s very, very tightly painted, very different from the wonderful rich impasto that you get in Rembrandt’s later works.

Another wonderful Old Master painting. And I recently, I talked to you about 18th-century Venetian painting, the collection in the Louvre. And I noticed the fact that the greatest 18th-century Venetian painter Giambattista Tiepolo is actually missing from the Louvre. There’s nothing by him. And, but, so this makes up, it’s not a huge painting and it’s by Tiepolo, and it’s the “Feast of Cleopatra.” And it’s a subject that appealed to Tiepolo. He painted it in several versions, including a large fresco in a palace in Venice. And I think Venice had become, it’s the whole business of Venice in the 18th century was putting on parties mainly for very wealthy Grand Tourers. It was city that was famous for its festivities. And this is one of the most legendary festivities in history when Cleopatra invites Mark Antony to dinner. And she really pulls out all the stops with fabulously exquisite, lavish food and entertainment. And she crowns the evening by taking off a priceless pearl earring and dropping it into a glass of vinegar to dissolve it and then drinking it. And he reacts with astonishment, as you can see, by the way he’s pulling back in his chair on the right-hand side.

You can see her hand holding the pearl earring. If I have to, if I could steal one painting from this museum, it has to be this, it’s tiny. It would really fit into a, easily, into a shopping bag. It’s by Chardin. And it’s an early work by, early-ish by Chardin. And you can see it’s of very humble kitchen elements. You know, pot, pan, pestle, onion, nothing luxurious, nothing spectacular. But what poetry, what beauty he gets from these very simple objects. And what a harmonious, wonderful composition that you always feel with… He’s one of those artists where you just feel, like Vermeer, I suppose, you couldn’t move anything. Everything has its right place. And it just has such a beautiful paint surface. This has a certain amount of impasto, certain density of paint and scumbling, you can see. Scumbling is where you… The highlights here are scumbled. That’s where you get this slightly grainy, uneven application of the paint. And it’s, again, one of those places where if you wish, you can make a direct comparison between Canaletto and Guardi. That was one of the questions I used to get asked by my students. “How can you tell the difference between Canaletto and Guardi?” Because they’re very often painting the same subject matter, very often views of Venice, because this is very characteristic. Canaletto, not a big one, but very precise. If I was able to blow up the detail in the background, he’s giving you an enormous amount of information about the buildings, and about the inhabitants, and about the gondolas. And it’s brilliant and it’s amazing.

To me, there’s something a little bit mechanical about it. I often feel with these kind of paintings by Canaletto, that he’s kind of on automatic. Whereas this is Guardi. This is probably not an actual scene. So this is what you call a veduta. This is an identifiable place in Venice, and he’s giving you as much information about it as possible. This is more an evocation of Venice. So it’s what’s called a capriccio. It’s an imaginary scene. And you can see it’s also a very small-scale painting. And you can see the brushwork is much more fluid, much more spontaneous. In his day, Guardi was not anything like as famous as Canaletto, and certainly couldn’t command the kind of prices that Canaletto could. And he really had to wait till nearly a hundred years after his death to be discovered. And he, of course, this is a period of Impressionism, and a lot of French painters in, not just the Impressionists, other French painters in the late 19th century, were developing a much more spontaneous and fluid application of paint. And he fitted in very well with that. In that room with all the furniture, we have, there are a couple of paintings by Fragonard. This is very late Baroque, Rococo, curvilinear brushwork, juicy, succulent paint, very sensuous, very ancien regime 'cause it’s a very frivolous subject. I’ll say more about that in a minute. So yeah, he, in a way, seems to be the ultimate Rococo artist. He’s quite belated though. I mean he doesn’t die. He actually lives past 1800. I think it’s something like 1807, 1808 that he dies, long after the Rococo style had gone out of fashion.

And Neoclassicism, with its much tighter linear technique had triumphed. So I said this a frivolous subject that for a sort of dissolute 18th-century aristocrat, the sort of person who would’ve liked this, there would’ve been erotic connotations. It’s a young girl and she’s slipped, and the pot that she’s carrying is spilling its contents. So this would’ve been understood at the time as a metaphor for the loss of virginity. This is a Boucher. And again, people often say to me, “Well, what’s the difference between Fragonard and Boucher? Boucher’s a generation older, also very, very Rococo. Look at all the crumpled material, the curvilinear patterns in the brushwork throughout the sweety colours that the Rococo likes, the bathroom colours, pastel colours, and the frivolous subject matter. It’s a scene of gallantry, music-making. again, having a man and a woman making music together, having very erotic connotations in the 18th century. But let’s just go back to make a comparison. The Fragonard is much more boldly painted, much, much more freely painted. The Boucher has a kind of early nacreous surface, much smoother. And here’s another scene. Got two scenes of seduction. Seduction being a huge theme really, in the 18th-century France, in literature, in music, and in the visual arts. This is the period of the ancien regime of golden age for the aristocracy.

They didn’t work, they didn’t pay taxes. There was nothing to do really for them, except enjoy life, enjoy all the good things in life, eating, drinking, gambling, hunting, fornication, not necessarily in that order. These were what it was all about. So this is, again, a scene of seduction. Very, very ancien regime. And this is another scene of seduction, but this is below the stairs. This is in the kitchen, cabbages and the artichokes, and the kitchen utensils are telling you that. Now, this is quite a small room, that as you can see, has a fine desk, but it’s otherwise completely devoted to portraits and completely devoted to 18th-century portraits. These were hugely prized in the late 19th, early 20th century when these millionaire collections were being put together, Frick. Rothschilds led the way, of course, but Frick, Huntington, and so on. And it’s partly one feels, that these were people, this was new money that was buying these things. So they liked these portraits 'cause it was almost like buying ancestors. And in real terms, 18th-century portraits, that they were the most expensive things you could buy, Reynolds, Gainsborough, and all the French portraitists, Vigee Le Brun, and so on. So in real terms, they actually haven’t actually kept their value from 1900 to 2020. There’s a wonderful collection of them here. There are these two busts of distinguished military gentlemen. This is the Marshal de Saxe. He was the illegitimate son of the King of Poland. And he was a professional soldier. And he entered the service of the French army. And he’s generally considered to be the most successful French military leader of the 18th century.

By and large, they didn’t do very well, the French military in the 18th century, they more or less lost the War of the Spanish Succession. They certainly, heavily lost in the Seven Years’ War. But he, you could say he saved the military honour of France. He was a very brilliant commander and considered a very handsome man. And he may be familiar to opera lovers amongst you as the hero of Cilea’s opera, "Adriana Lecouvreur,” ‘cause in life, he was the lover of the great actress Adrienne Lecouvreur. So in the opera, he’s Maurizio. And here’s another military commander. His name was Lowendahl, a little bit older. He was, again, he was actually not French, he was German. He was born in Hamburg, but entered the French army. And I like the way that they’re placed. So they look like they’re having a dialogue with one another. But they’re both by a sculptor called Lemoyne. And you can see a very , very alive, very animated, and seemingly in some kind of dialogue with one another. This is the Queen of France in the mid-18th century, and she is the wife of Louis XV. I wonder how many of you know what her name was. When I talk about her in lectures, I always say, “Who is the, name me a mistress of Louis XV.” Everybody says, you know, everybody puts up their hand. They all say, “Oh, Madame de Pompadour.” Or they might say, “Madam du Barry.”

And very few, and then I say, “Well, who is his wife?” And if anybody at all, it’s always very much fewer hands go up, for she’s Marie Leszczynska. She was the Polish princess. She gave birth, I think, to 10 children of Louis XV. He was a very busy man in the bedroom. That’s what one has to say. And, but, and I think she had quite a happy life. But at the time, of course, the maitresse-en-titre, the official mistress, Madame de Pompadour, people made a bit much more fuss of the mistress than they did of the king’s wife. You know, when foreign ambassadors came to Versailles, they would scuttle past Marie Leszczynska who was sitting there doing her sewing in order to present their gifts and their compliments to Madame de Pompadour. There are several portraits of children by the artist Jean-Baptiste Greuze. Paintings of children suddenly become very, very fashionable in the mid-18th century. When you go to any big museum of painting, the numbers of children represented, in say, the Renaissance and the Baroque are quite small. But if, for instance, if you go into the National Gallery in London, the 18th-century French room, suddenly, there are lots and lots of children. And it was, this is a period when people really, I suppose people have always appreciated the cuteness, at least of their own children. But in the 18th century, it was, became a very popular subject. And Greuze really specialised. I must say, I find his children too cute for comfort. This would be my choice of the most amazing portrait in the collection. And this is a self-portrait of the artist Maurice Quentin de La Tour. And I very often use this, here’s a better image of it.

I often use this, again, to represent the idea of the ancien regime and the role of the artist in the ancien regime. Ancien regime being the period between the death of Louis XIV and the French Revolution. Very aristocratic period, a very self-indulgent period. And you can see that he has aspirations really to be seen as an aristocratic. He’s wearing a powdered wig. He’s wearing a very expensive blue velvet jacket and very expensive lace cravat. I can’t, this is a pastel by the way. So I don’t think he would’ve, if you’re working in pastel, a lot of coloured dust around, I don’t think you’d risk your powdered wig or your blue velvet jacket while working in pastel. And so different really from the idea of the artists that we get a little bit later. Once you get to Romanticism, artists suddenly become very serious, very intense. So he doesn’t look serious or intense. He’s got this smile, the smile that Kenneth Clark in the series “Civilization,” he dubbed it “The Smile of Reason.” And you’ve probably heard me before, they call it the smirk of reason, which is a rather superior socialite smile. But it’s brilliant, isn’t it? It’s so brilliant. It’s so alive. Here we get closer to his smirky smile. And so he was, I’m not sure if he did any oil paintings actually, he was certainly, he was primarily a pastelist. This is the great age of the pastel portrait, the 18th century. And pastels really came into their own, I would say, in the Rococo period, partly because of the range of colour. You know, we talk about pastel colours. Pastel is a chalk with pigment mixed with it. So the colours are always chalky, they’re always going to be sweet, bathroom, sweety colours. And that was very much to the taste of the period.

And another reason I think that pastel portraits became very popular in this period is that pastel is a very, very rapid medium as compared to oil painting, which is much, much slower and more laborious. When I first came to Paris on my birthday in 1963, I went up to Place du Theatre and I sat for half an hour for an artist who made a pastel portrait of me in the space of half an hour. It’s possible to do. Well, I’m sure this one took quite a lot more than half an hour with the incredible elaboration of the lady’s dress. But in the Rococo period, the period of Louis XV, it’s a period where relaxation, intimacy, spontaneity, these qualities are very valued. And these are qualities that you can more easily capture, I would say, in pastel than you can in oil. You see, once again, she’s giving us quite a flirty, quite a superior smile, isn’t she? This is by a rival artist called Perronneau, of another aristocrat, or I think also wonderful portrait, was going to look, give you his name, this guy, which is Charles le Normant du Coudray. It’s not quite so relaxed and jolly as the other portraits I’ve shown you. This, this is in the same, we’ve got one English portrait, and it really sticks out from the others. He’s a bit porky, isn’t it? Very , very, that pink fleshy Englishness. And he doesn’t look like he’d be quite so much fun to sit next to at a dinner party as Maurice Quentin de La Tour. But this is by Sir Joshua Reynolds. It’s quite a late work by him. And it’s the Second Earl of Northington.

And, but it’s a fabulous piece of painting. Reynolds is a very uneven artist, but really when he’s fired up, and I think he was for this, this is a really sort, look at the way the cravat is painted. It’s quite a sumptuous painterly piece of painting. Now we move on to another museum just around the corner, and this is the Musee de la Chasse et de la Nature, the Museum of Hunting and Nature. And I must have walked past this museum a hundred times before I actually went into it 'cause I thought, “Hmm, no, I’m not interested in that. I’m not interested in hunting.” I mean, the idea of taking pleasure in killing animals is actually completely abhorrent to me. I don’t mind people killing animals if they need to eat them or if you have to, you know, culling, whatever you have to in certain circumstances. But the idea of actually going out there with a gun and seeing something beautiful moving and shooting it dead, for me, I just don’t get it. But one day, I was at a loose end and I thought, “Wow, you know, I better check this place out because I’m always taking groups of people around the Marais.” And so it was a revelation to me. Yes, it is full of guns and it is full of stuffed animals. But they’re used in a very interesting way. And this museum is not a celebration of macho sportsmanship or a celebration of killing things. It’s an extremely thought-provoking interrogation, you could say, or meditation on the relationship between man and nature, and man and animals.

So there is one room which is really quite scary and macabre, but it’s a gallery which is full of stuffed animals, and it’s a little bit like something out of a horror movie. Here is the room with all these trophies on the wall. But even in this room, there are exhibits that are really thought-provoking. I mean, these, this is in a vitrine in that room. It’s a modern sculpture. Sculpture. And this is really making, I think, quite a trenchant point about killing living things, and shooting living things. It’s not in any way celebratory. But when you enter this museum, you are going on a wonderful, magical mystery tour. The whole museum is like a huge assemblage. A huge… It’s like being in a movie. It’s like being in a surreal movie. There’s something very surreal about it. I think of the movies of Jean Courteau, for instance. It’s very eclectic and it mixes all sorts of things. Stuffed animals, weapons, but works of art from different periods and a contemporary art. And here, for instance, you can see mediaeval tapestries, and certainly trophies, but very beautiful pieces of furniture from different periods. This is a creation made of birds’ feathers and books. And there are little small rooms that you enter like this one that are, I think, absolutely magical in the effect. So things so interestingly and creatively put together to really make you think about things as you go round. And there are some very important works of art in the museum. Notably, there are two paintings of Chardin. Now, these trophy paintings of dead birds, and rabbits, and things that have been shot were very, very popular in the 18th century. And usually, I really don’t like them.

And probably the only artist who can make me like them, again, is Chardin, because the, you know, just the technique is so wonderful. It’s not really coming across, I’m afraid, in these pictures, which I took myself in museum. You just have to go and see the paintings in the flesh, so to speak. So it’s a change, constantly changing display. And they invite contemporary artists to display their works amongst the other works in the museum. And you can see this is a trophy. It’s actually made out of fabrics. And it’s by an Argentinian artist called Tamara Kostianovsky. Kostianovsky. And her raison d'etre she says, is to find beauty where you don’t expect to see it. And at the moment, this won’t be permanent. I don’t know how long this is going to be on, but there are works by her throughout the museum. These, I think they’re wonderful, actually, really imaginative and extraordinary. And this is a kind of riff, so to speak, on Rembrandt’s famous “Flayed Ox” or maybe also the paintings of dead animals by Soutine. This is by Eva Jospin. She’s the daughter of a former prime minister of France, and she had a big show there a couple of years ago. And they kept this as a permanent display, which I also find quite amazing, very fragile piece. So warnings everywhere, don’t touch it. And so everybody I’ve taken to this museum has really, really loved it. There are a series of rooms that are devoted to particular animals. And this is the room devoted to the sanglier, the wild boar. And you can see a painting by Rubens. There are ancient Greek and Roman depictures of boars and boar hunting. There’s a little room devoted to falconry. And a particular favourite room of mine is the room of the , of the dog. And a mixture of works of art of all different periods here. Very cute. And this is the last object I have to show you tonight. This is an 18th-century bed for a very spoiled ancien regime pooch. So what have we got here?

Q&A and Comments:

Oh, Sheila, wonderful to see. “Trude, when she came to Paris, my aunt Florivat, who had served in the weeks during war was then working for the joint and helped her go to Durban in South Africa where she was befriended by my aunt and uncle.” Wonderful. So nice to hear that. “She moved from South Africa to Israel, then London. And my uncle and aunt left South Africa after Sharpeville in 1960. And then you met her in London through them.” Yes, she was, I used to accompany her to schools, and she was an incredibly powerful speaker. I remember going to one school where there were really restless kids. And the most troublesome ones, they put at the front because they thought they could probably control ‘em better. And it took her five minutes to have them in the palm of her hand. I think it was partly that he was this sweet, well, she was quite tough at you when you got to know her, but you looked at her and she was just this apple-cheeked, adorable, very pretty old lady. And she was talking very calmly, and she was describing what it was like in a cattle truck. She was describing Auschwitz very bluntly. And the kids were absolutely mesmerised.

So very nice for me to have a reason to remember, to remember Trudy. Yes, of course, we know, you know that. And now it’s very acknowledged in France that the police of the Vichy regime played a terrible role in the rounding up of the Jews in 1942. Well, not always. There are honourable exceptions. The city of Lyon, the police were told they had to arrest all the Jews of Lyon. In fact, most of them, nearly all of them escaped because the police went round the day before they were supposed to arrest these people and warned everybody. And they all went into hiding. So it’s not all bad. They’re are very heroic and wonderful stories about the French during the occupation.

This is Marco Haim. “Often hosted in the Rue des Rosiers by a cousin of my late mother-in-law became head of the Lubavitch community when he and his wife arrived in Paris under an assumed Polish name and passport. He had survived the war by fleeing from Lithuania east to Tashkent.” I’m sure there are many, many fascinating stories of this part. The synagogue, it’s always referred to as the synagogue in the Rue Pavee. That’s P-A-V-E-E. Oh, yes. Somebody’s put that.

Thank you, Rita. Thank you. Lorna.

“Often wondered who took over the vacant apartments of the Jews deported by the Nazis who never returned. Most of the occupants around the Rue des Rosiers disappeared, and the area around there remained quite derelict for some time.” Yes, yes. Very terrible memories. Well, of course, now, as I said, it’s an extremely smart area.

Q: “Did the Cognac couple, Cognacq-Jay couple hire an agent to purchase their collections or did they do it themselves?”

A: I need to find out more about that actually. There were people, for instance, when I get to talk about the, the Jacquemart-Andre, there’s no doubt that by and large, it was Nelie Jacquemart. I mean, she had the eye, I think. And she made some quite remarkable discoveries. I think that certainly, the Cognacq-Jay, it represents their taste, but they probably would have had agents working for them as well.

Q: “How do you spell Chandra?”

A: I’m not sure what I was… Oh, Chardin. Chardin, yes. Thank you, Stephen, very much. Yes, all these museums allow you to take pictures without flash. I think they can’t really stop it these days with everybody having mobile phones. Thank you, Sarah.

This is Barry. “Just back from a bat mitzvah in Nashville.” Thank you, Barry and Myrna. Yes. Paris is inexhaustible. What can I tell you, Lorna? I discover new things, and there are so many small museums. And, you know, everybody is crowded into the odd, or say, in the Louvre. True to life. Oh, veduta is a view. A veduta is a view of an actual place.

Q: “I can understand why wigs were worn, but why white?”

A: I know, it’s strange, isn’t it? Young girls with white hair. Yes, yes, it’s hard to explain really. Cheryl, thank you for your kind comment.

How did… They did have fixative. Yes. I think it’s shellac that they used to fix the pastels. Thank you, Jonathan. And I hope I haven’t offended anybody with my remarks about hunting. I’m glad you agree with me. And thank you, Suzanne.

Now, the Museum of Nature, I should have told you that. Sorry, thank you for reminding me. It was actually a couple called Sommer, who, they were very wealthy and industrialists. I think he had a factory that made rugs and carpets. So it was initially privately funded, but certainly the state is now involved. But what I actually just noticed today I didn’t realise was that the building is on a 99-year lease to the museum. So when that 99 years is up, I don’t know what happens because if it’s just the state takes over the whole thing.

Nicki, thank you very much. And Henry.

And this is Beverly. Oh, there is, yeah, there is very good bakery. That’s true. Where you can get bagels and things. Yes, I’m going to talk about the Jewish museum the week after next. Another favourite museum of mine in Paris. Really, one of the best Jewish museums, I would say. Ooh, that’s jumped. Where has it gone to? Another uplifting story about the French during World War II, the village of Le Chambon. And there are many wonderful, one of my absolute favourite stories is of the chanteuse Mireille, who is taken into, hidden in a convent in the later part of the war. And the nuns were actively involved with the Resistance. And the British were dropping supplies, and spies nearby, and they had to parachute in. And, of course, they had to just either hide or destroy the evidence of… They had to take away the… If the Germans saw the parachutes, they would know what was happening. So the nuns were given the silk parachutes. And Mireille, who was a nightclub singer from London, she taught them how to transform the silk parachutes into sexy underwear, which was sold on the black market to raise money for the Resistance.

“The synagogue in the Rue Pavee is across from the shiva. One of the teachers, a rabbi, very kindly took me inside and I was able to visit.” Lucky, lucky you. It’s not, as I said, it’s not that easy to get into. I will be talking about the Jacquemart-Andre quite shortly. In fact, I’m going tomorrow. I can’t wait! I’m so excited. It’s been closed for a year. I want to see what they’ve done with it. So I will certainly be talking about that in the next few weeks.

“Haussmann museum.” I don’t think I know that that could be. And thank you again, everybody, “I’d like to see some modern artist to do a painting of an animal attacking a hunter, especially after the Jewry school shooting where my…” Yes, I know. Yes. That is too awful to think about.

Thank you, Max. And thank you, Carla.

And as this, I mean, it’s endless really. I could go on forever about museums of Paris. And then, of course, there are other wonderful cities. “And a tea room with those fabulous tarts.” I think you are thinking of. Yeah, you’re thinking of the Jacquemart-Andre, which I’m not really a sweet tooth person, but I can tell you that they are the best quiches that I’ve ever had in my life. But I will talk about that when we get to the Jacquemart-Andre. And certainly I would like eventually to do the commandos on my list of museums to do without a doubt. , I’m not sure what that is about. No, and not Mireille Mathieu. She was, that’s a different singer. A singer just called Mireille. And her most famous song is “Couches dans le foin.” “Sleeping in the Hay.” So she actually put on a little concert for the nuns of her naughty cabaret songs, and which I thought was very sweet.

And thank you, Rhonda. Oh, yes, that’s probably what you mean. Yes, it’s true. The Jacquemart-Andre is on the Boulevard Haussmann. So that’s probably the museum. It’s not small. It’s quite big really. And as I said, I’m absolutely salivating at the thought of going to revisit it tomorrow. It’s one of, well, it’s just one of everybody’s… Everybody who knows Jacquemart-Andre loves it. And I’m looking forward very much to telling you all about it. Marais means swamp. “Not usually a compliment to those who’d dwell there.” Yeah, exactly. Thank you all very much. I’m back with you again next Sunday with the Carnavalet. Bye-bye.