Musée Maillol, Paris
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Musée Maillol, Paris
Home to the Seine-front Musee d’Orsay, the Eiffel Tower, and the Hotel des Invalides, the 7th arrondissement features heavily on the standard sightseeing tour of Paris. But head into the quiet streets of this residential neighbourhood and you’ll find one of the many hidden gems of the ‘city of light’: the Musee Maillol, a small museum devoted to the work of Aristide Maillol, a pioneering turn-of-the-century sculptor.
Born in provincial France, the young Aristide Maillol decided at an early age to become a painter. He moved to Paris and – after several rejections – was accepted to the École des Beaux-Arts. Influenced by Paul Gauguin, Maillol took up tapestry art, opening a tapestry workshop that brought him recognition around France. Soon after, he turned his interest to sculpture, which would soon define his artistic career.
Maillol’s artistic style would be defined by his monumental female nudes. Taking inspiration from Greek sculpture, his works emphasised the formal lines of the body in a time when the dominant tendency in sculpture was influenced by the naturalism and emotion of Auguste Rodin. Some of his most famous sculptures include The Mediterranean (La Méditerranée, 1905), a sitting/reclining figure based on his wife, Clotilde Nargis, and Ile de France, a female nude that retains a placid, self-sufficient air, even as she is in motion.
Dana Vierny and the Maillol Museum:
The Maillol museum was established in 1995 by Dina Vierny, the artist’s last model and muse. Housed in a hotel particulier (grand townhouse) that was the residence of the poet Alfred de Musset in the 19th century. In the 1950s it hosted a cabaret, run by the surrealist poet Jacques Prévert and his brother Pierre, which was associated with the bohemian writers and artists of the Latin Quarter and Saint Germain neighbourhoods on the ‘left bank’ of the Seine River. While the museum holds the majority of his works, several can be seen in the Tuileries Garden.
In addition to Maillol’s works, the Museum is home to a number of interesting works of modern art from Vierny’s private collection. Vierny was particularly passionate about the primitive artists of the 1920s and beyond, who followed the lead of Henri Rousseau. Several of Rousseau’s works can be seen in the collection. His Portrait of Frumence Biche in Civil portrays Biche, a soldier, in his ‘civil’ dining wear:
The museum also displays The Spirits of the Forest, one of Rousseau’s celebrated ‘jungle scenes’. Rousseau, who had never been to the jungle, combined flora and fauna that did not exist in reality, which – combined with his off-kilter scale and large-eyed, simplistic animals – gave his scenes a dreamlike, surreal quality:
A gardener by trade, Bauchant was fascinated by flowers, particularly dahlias, which he portrayed in numerous paintings – even posing alongside them for his self-portrait.
Competed during the German occupation of World War II, Jean Eve’s Huile sur Toile lovingly evokes a sumptuous meal – which was of course, denied during the period of privations.
One of the most interesting self-taught painters in Vierny’s collection is Séraphine Louis, a lay nun and housekeeper who claimed that the Virgin Mary had come to her in a dream, urging her to take up painting. Beginning her career at around forty, her floral paintings became ever-more surreal and dreamlike throughout her career. She believed that the end of the world was approaching, and many of her paintings have an apocalyptic feel:
Odyssey Traveller visits the Maillol Museum as part of our , 21 Days in Paris. This aims to explore the in depth. You will live like a in a self-catered apartment, and explore the art, history, and literature of the .
Did you know that – with over 297 galleries, museums, and historic – Paris has the most cultural attractions in the world? You’re probably familiar with some of them – the , the , and the . But many of the remainder lie off the standard path. On this , we aim to bring you to some of Paris’s lesser known museums, including the Maillol Museum.