The Montmartre Museum - again

Some three years ago I posted about the danger of the closure of the Montmartre Museum. It was saved. In July last year I posted about the museum again, including about the plans for important improvements. In that post I also talked about all the well-known artists who have lived and worked here – Renoir, Valadon, Utrillo, Bernard, Dufy…

I passed by the other day and had a check on what has been done so far. Parts of the garden are in a very good shape...  

... and some nice and safe stairs to the lower parts of the garden (little park) now gives a good access to the museum on the other side of the main building …

... and further down also a chance to get a better, different, view of the vineyard, the “Clos de Montmartre” (see previous post).

Other parts of the garden and some adjacent buildings are still under renovation – ongoing until 2014.

Although I have already talked about it in my previous posts, I cannot omit to show you some paintings from the garden by Renoir, by Valadon, by Dufy…  It was when he worked here that Renoir finished one of his most famous paintings, of the nearby “Moulin de la Galette”. … and in the garden you can now find an installation reminding of his painting “The Swing”.

A personality who had a lot of influence on some of the painters was Jules Tanguy, “Père Tanguy”. He worked here for some five years as a “housekeeper” and later opened a little shop (now an art gallery) where he sold painting equipment – often against a painting, which he then exposed. Among his friends and customers you can name Cézanne, Renoir, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, van Gogh… and Emile Bernard, one of the occupants of the present museum. The two latter, van Gogh and Bernard, portrayed “Père Tanguy”, van Gogh several times. Emile Bernard was a very close friend to especially Gauguin and van Gogh. There is even a photo of Bernard and van Gogh together on the Seine bank (van Gogh turns his back). “Père Tanguy” and Bernard were some of the few personalities who were present during van Gogh’s funeral in 1890. Bernard even made a painting of the event.  I think it’s worth mentioning that “Père Tanguy” was a great fan of and sold Japanese prints, that van Gogh also became a fan and that this type of art to a high extent influenced van Gogh’s and some other post-impressionists' way of painting. You can see some Japanese prints behind “Père Tanguy” on van Gogh’s portraits of him. We must certainly be very grateful to "Père Tanguy"!