Petit Palais - again

I have already posted about the Petit Palais, (see here), but I thought something more had to be said and especially shown. The Petit Palais was built for the 1900 Universal Exhibition at the same time as the Grand Palais, which stands in front (see different posts).  Most of the buildings from the 1900 Universal Exhibition have disappeared, but the Petit Palais as well as the Grand Palais were built to stay… and they do. The Petit Palais houses the “City of Paris Museum of Fine Arts”, and as all the City-of-Paris museums, there is no entrance fee for the permanent collections (which is not true for the national, private… museums).  You will however have to pay for the temporary exhibitions.

A few new glimpses of the outside with its incredibly decorated entrance, the general richness of decorations, sculptures …

… of the inner courtyard (where you can have a snack, a coffee, a glass of wine…)…

… of the entrance hall and galleries, with the ceilings decorated by Albert Besnard (1849-1934)…

… the different stairs leading to a lower floor.

The collections are partly based on paintings and sculptures acquired by the City of Paris since 1870 and also to a large part on donations. They cover different periods, but basically only until 1900… more recent art belonging to the City of Paris is to be found in the “City of Paris Museum of Modern Art”, on which I wrote e.g. here.  

Looking on what you can find in the museum, I could mention one large hall presenting what mainly comes from the 1921 Tuck donation, including tableware, watches, figurines, sculptures, paintings…

On the main floor, there is a lot to see from especially the 19^th century, including several paintings by Gustave Courbet (1819-77) and a fabulous portrait of Sarah Bernhardt … You may not so often see paintings by André Gill, more known as a caricaturist… and for the “Lapin Agile” (see story here).

… and there is more of it downstairs. 

We can find some sketches, plasters, models… for different sculptures which we in a more permanent form can find around Paris. This goes e.g. for the “La Défense” by L-E Barrias (1841-1905), which gave the name to the business quarters with that name (see post here) and for the statue of “Marianne” by Léopold Morice (1846-1919) on the Place de la République (see different posts, here and here).

Jules Dalou (1838-1902) is represented by the then future monuments of the “Triumph of the Republic” on Place de la Nation (see post here) and his tribute to the painter Eugene Delacroix in the Luxembourg Gardens (see post here).  

There are other sculptures, including the portrait that Rodin made of his friend Dalou, an impressive Chinese head by J-B Carpeaux (1827-75)…

There is a large collection from older days, icons…

… and even some antiques.

Unfortunately some treasures, mostly from the 17^th century, including Rembrandt, Rubens, Poussin… were hidden when I passed by the other day (so I “stole” some pictures from the museum site).