By John Masters
Meridian Writers’ Group
PARIS—The Musée
d’Orsay might not have the weight of Madrid’s Prado or St. Petersburg’s
Hermitage or the Louvre, just across the Seine, but it is one of the most
enjoyable museums you’ll ever walk through.
In fact, its very
lightness is one of the most appealing things about it. Built in an old railway
station, it uses the vaulted glass roof that once covered the tracks and
platforms to fill the space with sun and give it an airiness many other museums
lack.
A soaring roof, natural
light, air that always seems fresh and the constant, gently echoing burble of
human activity give the Musée d’Orsay both drama and an intimacy, as if you’re
part of a large but private conversation.
Oh, and the art. There’s
plenty of that, too.
The museum is the main
repository for French Impressionist works: Manet, Degas, Monet, Renoir,
Cézanne, Seurat, Gauguin. The Impressionist Gallery covers the entire history
of the movement, from its beginnings, with Fantgin-Latour’s
Homage to
Delacroix
(1864) to its end,
with Cézanne’s
Woman With a Coffee Pot
(1894).
In between, its walls
display some of the world’s best-known Impressionist works, and seeing the
originals, rather than copies, stimulates a fresh appreciation of their beauty.
Renoir’s
The Dance at the Moulin de la Galette
(1876) nearly jumps off the canvas at you
— or invites you to leap into the whirl of revellers.
Likewise, when you stand
in front of Monet’s
Woman With a Parasol
(1886), a painting that can seem very bland in reproductions, you can
almost feel the breeze pushing the grass and the woman’s white dress, and smell
the spring air.
What’s equally delightful
is discovering Impressionist painters you may never have known existed, but
whose work is of as high a calibre as those you’ve known forever. Gustave
Caillebotte (1848-1894), for example.
Impressionism is the
museum’s heart, but its broader mandate is the arts from 1850 to 1914. And not
just painting: sculpture, furniture and photography have their place here, too.
There are works by Rodin
and lesser-known sculptors, such as Joseph Bernard (1866-1951), whose marble
frieze
La Danse
(1891-1915)
is like an early Art Deco riff on classical Greek themes.
The museum also has an
Art Nouveau wing. Art Nouveau rejected the corseted forms of the mid-1800s,
emphasizing instead a more “organic” approach to design. One of the best
examples is the Charpentier Room, a complete chamber of swirling mahogany, oak
and poplar that’s a bit like walking into a semi-tamed forest.
Because of its smart
architecture, the Musée d’Orsay will stave off that creeping museum ennui
longer than most such places. But when it hits, there are two eating places to
recover in.
The first is tucked away
on the fifth level. A modern café, it has the back of a huge, Big
Ben–like clock face for one of its walls. The other is on the second
level, is all gilded moulding and glass chandeliers, looking much the way it
would have when the trains still stopped here.
ACCESS
For more information on
the Musée d’Orsay visit its website at
www.musee-orsay.fr
.
For more information on
Paris visit the Paris Convention and Visitors Bureau website at
www.parisinfo.com
.
PHOTO CAPTION
Colin Peter Field presides over the Hôtel Ritz’s Bar Hemingway, the Nobel
Prize–winning author’s home away from home for more than 30 years.
PHOTO CREDIT
John Masters/Meridian Writers’ Group
Sipping the perfect cocktail at the Ritz’s Bar Hemingway
By John Masters
Meridian Writers’ Group
PARIS—When it comes to mixing drinks, Colin Peter Field is a
perfectionist. Take his dry martini, for example: it’s served in a crystal
glass that’s been refrigerated to precisely minus 18.4 degrees Celsius —
the lowest temperature, Field has discovered, before the stem cracks when held
by the expectant imbiber.
Field is the bartender at the Hôtel Ritz’s Bar Hemingway — although
“bartender” in this case seems as poor a word for what he does as “tinkerer”
would have been for Einstein. Field is a maestro both at preparing drinks and
at making charming, witty conversation (or sliding unobtrusively into the
background). A sort of compassionate Oscar Wilde with a silver shaker.
Field, an Englishman who says, “Ever since I was 14 I wanted to be a
bartender,” has presided over the Bar Hemingway since its reopening in 1994.
The room had only been used for special events since the 1980s, but had a
glorious past. Originally the Petit Bar, it opened in 1921 and was discovered
by Ernest Hemingway in 1925. The Nobel Prize–winning author would still
recognize the place: although a small hutch was added in 1997, the main room
remains tiny, cozy and panelled with light oak.
“Hemingway came to the Ritz,” recalls Field, “and said, ‘If I die and go to
heaven I’d like it to resemble the bars at the Ritz.’” Plenty of other famous
people have had a drink here, among them Winston Churchill, Theodore Roosevelt,
F Scott Fitzgerald and Cole Porter, but Hemingway was a regular for more than
30 years. When he rode into Paris with the American army liberating the city in
the Second World War, the Ritz was the second place he visited, after a stop at
Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare & Co. bookstore. In the Petit Bar, according to
Field, “he downed 51 dry martinis.”
Indeed, Hemingway’s love of alcohol is supposed to have led to the the
creation of the Bloody Mary. As Field tells the tale, the author was looking
for a drink that his wife, Mary Walsh Hemingway, couldn’t detect on him. The
Petit Bar’s Bernard Azimont came up with a tomato juice and vodka concoction
that passed the test. “That bloody Mary couldn’t smell a thing!,” Hemingway is
reported to have gleefully told Azimont.
Under master mixologist Field, the Bar Hemingway continues to introduce new
drinks. (A collection of them is in Field’s book,
The Cocktails of the Ritz
Paris
, published by Simon & Schuster.) His most popular — outselling
even the dry martini, is the Serendipity (calvados, fresh mint, apple juice and
champagne).
His latest is the Opus Dei (vodka, fresh grapefruit juice, champagne and a
drop of sugar, over ice), whipped up for
The Da Vinci Code
. (Robert
Langdon, the book’s main character, is staying at the Ritz when his adventure
begins.)
His most expensive — and the world’s most costly commercially
available cocktail, according to the
Guinness Book of Records
— is the
Ritz Side Car. It uses 100-year-old cognac Field discovered in the hotel
cellar, Cointreau and lemon juice. Shake 10 times and serve: 400 euros.
ACCESS
The Bar Hemingway is open Monday through Saturday from 6:30 p.m. to 2 a.m.
Men require jackets. No cell phones allowed.
For more information on the Bar Hemingway visit the Hôtel Ritz Paris
website at
www.ritzparis.com
.