After the hours of queuing, entering the Musee D'Orsay for the first time must be akin to Howard Carter's emotions when he opened the tomb of Tutankhamen. The whole place is gleaming with paintings you know only from prints and statues in all shapes and hues and materials are to be seen everywhere.
Most people just glance at the statue of the small boy and his dog as they race towards the Rodins. It is not dramatic and not very well known at all but it is in actuality a portrait of The Last Napoleon, The Prince Imperial, with his dog Nero. When the military ambitions of Napoleon the Third crashed down about his head at Sedan in 1870, there was a devastating change in the fortunes of all his family. Under the patronage of Queen Victoria, the Imperial family spent their exile at Chislehurst.  Napoleon plotted a return and Eugenie bemoaned her fall from grace, while the scion of the family, The Prince Imperial, found himself a new role. If he could not be a part of the French army then he would become a part of the British, which is what he did quite successfully.
When the British army suffered the humiliating massacre at Isandlwana, Lord Chelmsford was ordered to assemble a punitive expedition meant to re-establish British superiority in Zululand. The Prince Imperial used all the diplomatic influence at his disposal and travelled with the Army to South Africa. Always impetuous, he travelled with a group of eight soldiers on a scouting expedition deep into Zululand, where in deference to his rank, he was allowed to give an order to dismount for a rest. The ground he chose was surrounded by tall grass which allowed a Zulu patrol to approach closely without being seen. When the Zulus burst from cover, panic ensued and the soldiers dashed for their horses, mounting on the run. An expert horseman, the Prince, nine times out of ten would have outran his pursuers and returned to brag of his exploits, but on this occasion, he slipped from the saddle and found himself alone facing a fierce enemy who killed with no quarter given. The Prince Imperial tried to defend himself to the last and fired his revolver several times but in the end he was overcome by nine Zulu warriors.
I always think there is something surreal in the death of the last Napoleon by Zulu assegais.
He was born in 1856 and died in 1879 ---- the statue was sculpted in 1865 when his future appeared golden.
There is a copy of this statue in a small belvedere in a field next to Malmaison --- it is rarely visited.

While the statue of the Prince Imperial is meaningful and poignant because I know the background, the statue in silver means nothing to me at all in that respect.  I like it as a work of art but I am sure if  I knew as much about it as I did the Prince then I would probably find it even more interesting.  I said previously that for some reason information on some statues can be difficult { especially when you forget to look at the plaque on the base }  but that's not to say they can't be enjoyed just the same. In the absence of any information just make your own up --- I call this one The Tin Man, inspiration -- The Wizard of Oz.
The trio of African busts, apart from being realistic and colourful, are forerunners of the use of several stones as seen in the Oscar Wilde statue.  The sculptor here has used bronze, onyx and porphry to produce lifelike studies of what were at that time very exotic subjects.
It is difficult to photograph isolated subjects in the Musée and on the left is The Four Continents {1867 } by Carpeaux.

I don't know much about the white frieze, apart from the title and sculptor but it is another with an African theme and probably from the same era as the African busts when Africa was still the Dark Continent.

The set-piece depicted here is an allegorical scene again by Carpeaux with the pretentious title of ----- wait for it - Imperial France Protecting Agriculture and Science.  Although I like the clean lines of the sculpture I have to say that I if you are waiting for me to go into who is Science and who is Agriculture and why France feels it necessary to protect them then you are due for a disappointment.  Personally, I think all this allegorical stuff is just an excuse to sculpt nudes and since mid-19th century France was just as hypocritical as Victorian England then I don't think I am far wrong.

     I know it's hard to leave and I did say that it was just a quick visit but believe me when I tell you that it is just as hard to leave the Musée D'Orsay after 4 hours as it is after a glance at this page.

The lion at Denfert-Rocherau always makes me smile. No matter how ferocious he tries to be, he always ends up looking like a bronze version of the Lion King { "I  laugh in the face of danger " }. In fact most of the lions in Paris have the same look about them, haughty but nice, which makes me think they were all sculpted by the same person.

If you're in the mood for something a bit on the scary side, then across the road from the lion is the entrance to the catacombs. The section open to the public is just a fraction of the true area they cover underground but nevertheless it is still quite a walk and you travel underneath the lion and come out some distance away. The catacombs are the receptacles for millions of bones from the old Paris cemeteries which had become so full that they were literally overflowing. There have been stories of Parisians living next to these places who had to seal their cellars off because the bodies were falling into them. Anyway, night after night during the year of 1785, the bones were moved from their resting places and stacked neatly in the winding corridors of the catacombs where they can still be seen today in artistic arrangements of skull and hip and thigh. Napoleon the Third once paid a State visit and the Resistance had their headquarters here during the war and at one time it was a Punk hangout. The winding corridors were here a long time before all of this however, as this was where the stone for most buildings in Paris was hewn from, so it was a pretty neat idea to use them as an ossuary. Although it was never proved, the discovery of thousands of cat skeletons in one corridor directly beneath a restaurant by the Odéon,  specialising in rabbit and hare dishes, was a bit suspicious to say the least.
Over the entrance to the catacombs proper is the eery legend : STOP! THIS IS THE EMPIRE OF THE DEAD! at which point the number of visitors falls away quite dramatically.
While the sign at the entrance makes it clear that drunks, vagrants and prostitutes are not allowed, the authorities seem to have completely missed the irony of another sign which states clearly NO DOGS ALLOWED or are they just having a laugh ?

A short walk away is Montparnasse Cemetery which, while not having the same cachet as Pere LaChaise does have some famous Parisians buried there -- Dreyfus, Baudelaire, Sartre and de Maupassant among them.  One of the most distinctive of the tombs is that of the inventor Charles Pigeon who is sitting up in his four-poster, obviously worrying about the electric bill while his wife has a lie-in.

If the truth be known, most people think of La Belle Epoque as the Paris they would have liked to have known, given a choice.  But the era is not that long ago and Paris is not all that different ----the only things missing are the men and women who made Paris "gay" at that time.  The Place Montholon, just a short walk from the Folies Bergere and the Gare du Nord,  is not so very different now as it was a century ago and the only people you will see there are Parisians.  The sculptor here, obviously loved La Belle Epoque also and has taken the trouble to people this beautiful little square with ladies of the era. 
The obvious enjoyment and joie de vivre on their faces is symbolic of turn-of-the-century Paris.

One of the richest sources of statues is the delightfully decrepit Jardin des Plantes.  First established in 1626, the gardens comprise The National History Museum, a menagerie, massive greenhouses and the gardens themselves.  The menagerie is a bit on the expensive side considering they are still re-stocking it, after all the animals were eaten during the siege of 1870 { the porcupines were the last to end up in the pot }  and truth to tell, most of the animals look a bit flea-bitten anyway.  Buffon was the curator in the mid 1700's and it was via his work that the gardens rose to the pre-eminent position in the world of Natural History.
The Cuvier Fountain commemorates the naturalist Georges Cuvier. It stands across the road to the Rue Geoffrey St Hilaire entrance to the gardens and was erected in 1840, with carvings by Jean-Jacques Feuchère, for anyone who's interested. Actually, I should be a little ashamed to be so flippant about a sculptor I know nothing about because the fact is that I really love this fountain with it's eclectic collection of animals that in real life wouldn't have been seen dead together { or perhaps would have ---if you see what I mean }.

Cuvier was a precursor of Darwin and an avid fossil collector in the early 1800's, making some very astute observations as to their origins.  He was revered both in France and in England earning the soubriquet;
"Napoleon of intelligence".  He travelled to England to view the collections
of the English collectors Gideon Mantell and Richard Owen who later
founded the Natural History Museum.

Above is a statue of the great Buffon himself in the gardens he loved so well.  His house and stables across the road have been converted into apartments and apart from one or two concessions to modern life are just as they were when Buffon lived and worked there.

I don't know too much about the statue on the left, apart from the fact that it stands at the entrance to the Jardin and I like the way it is set with the wooded background.  What I do know is that the Jardin was a thriving centre of learning in all the Natural Sciences from the day of its inception, a perfect counterpoint to the Museums of London, where Darwinism was hotly debated.

Apart from the natural sciences,  the area was also a hot-bed of learning in what some might term the unnatural sciences.  Becquerel discovered radioactivity in 1896 and the Curies, for better or for worse, discovered radium.

The selection of statues here are a pot-pourri of things which have caught my eye and are captured on film.  Some statues are well known for being in-situ for hundreds of years while some are ephemeral and may never be seen again.
The group shown here in front of the Louvre were on a visit from their usual home in the Istanbul Museum.

The lion here, on the other hand, is a permanent resident and even though he's eating a bird,  still retains that cartoon-like aloofness of all the Paris lions.

The church of St Eustache was begun in 1523 and took over 100 years to complete.  Madame de Pompadour was baptized here as was Cardinal Richelieu while Moliere was buried here.  During the Revolution the parvis was a popular meeting place for sans-culottes who sang the Ça Ira and danced the Carmagnole but apart from its Gothic splendour the church's main claim to fame is as the parish church of Les Halles.  Hugo called the massive market Le Ventre de Paris { The Belly of Paris } and so it remained until the 1960's when the old cast iron buildings fronting the church were pulled down.  Most Parisians are still upset at what they regard as the loss of a great part of the life of the city but one of the good points was that it exposed the outstanding façade of St. Eustache.  Where the market-place used to be there is now a pedestrianised area of gardens and trellis-work which is very pleasant, leading from the Bourse to the Beaubourg and on the parvis is a huge head which I can't make my mind up whether I like or not.  The Parisians have a penchant for placing modern art next to traditional architecture, the most striking example being of course the glass pyramids in the Louvre forecourt.  I have seen a Miro totem-pole in the courtyard of the French Foreign office and the Pont Neuf draped in hessian and while I applaud the audacious use of modern art on one hand, there is just something which doesn't seem right.  I think that many people feel the same way ---but here's the church and here's the head, so judge for yourself.

Very few tourists take the trouble to make their way to Parc Monceau but if it is Belle Epoque Paris you are seeking then look no further than this beautiful little park.  Laid out in 1778 for the Duc d'Orleans in the English style and surrounded by opulent mansions, the park is chock full of  "follies" -- several pyramids, arcades and the "ruins" of a mock Roman lake with an old toll-house at the entrance go to make up a Royal trifle which retains its pre-revolutionary charm.  The follies are supplemented by various statues dotted throughout the grounds and there are none better or more in keeping than this one of de Maupassant et sa femme reclining at his feet.
The Roman lake can be seen in the background and here below is worth reproducing in more detail.

Paris is a place where it pays to wander off the beaten track.  While the established tourist places such as the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame etc are of course unmissable it is so easy to miss out by neglecting to look around.  As an instance, most peoples first sight of the Eiffel Tower is the classic vista  from Trocadero, The Palais Chaillot, looking down upon the fountains and the always awesome Tower itself.  But just a glance backwards reveals a vast square { more of a roundabout } with an equestrian statue of Marshall Foch in the centre.  Just to the side is a statue of Benjamin Franklin and across the road are a surround of forbidding concrete walls.  The walls themselves are off-putting but they enclose the bijou Passy Cemetery.  Now cemeteries in Paris are completely unlike cemeteries elsewhere in that they are repositories of French celebrities past, little history lessons and places of fine sculpture all at the same time.   While showing the proper respect to the dead they also have an indefinable humour about the tombstones.  
before entering Passy itself, a closer look at the wall reveals a sculpted War Memorial hidden behind the trees where soldiers and nurses are overlooked by Marianne.  Just within the ornate gates is a tiny office where a map of the cemetery can be obtained with the names and places of all the notables buried there.  The Eiffel Tower must be the finest backdrop to any cemetery anywhere.  Henry Farman's { 1874 - 1958 } tomb has him seated at one of his earliest biplane designs.  Farman made the first flight over New York city and designed one of the most hated aircraft of the First World War, the FE2B {Farman Experimental }.  The fliers were allowed no parachutes and the observer travelled in a sort of bin contraption which would normally have been the nosecone.  Edourd Manet is entombed alongside his sister-in-law Berthe Morisot while Debussy, Fauré and Fernandel are scattered throughout but the strangest grave for me is that of the silent movie star Pearl White.  A single white rose placed upon a black basalt tombstone denotes her last resting place and it is bizarre and surreal that the star of so many Hollywood epics should be buried here.   The last time I saw Pearl White was many years ago tied to a railroad track as usual by a moustachioed villain and here she is now all those years later in the shadow of Eiffel's Tower.  

And although the cemetery is as fitting a place 
as anywhere to finish off the Paris section just 
a little more will never be enough of the City
of Light.

s would ever be complete without a trip to Montmartre.  Strangely, there are few statues outdoors to speak of  but the Salvador Dali museum tucked away around the corner from the Place du Tertre, concentrates on Dali statues more than his paintings. 
The statues are no less enigmatic than the paintings and there are superb miniatures on sale --- sadly far above my pocket.
Some of the statues here can be found in one or two paintings and the elephant here is straight out of "The Temptation of St Anthony" and reminiscent of Bernini's elephant in Rome.

Maurice Utrillo's studio which was also the home of his mother Suzanne Valadon has recently been refurbished and opened as a museum.  Despite rumours to the contrary
Montmartre still retains its village atmosphere.

The picture on the left is typical of Montmartre while the picture below is a detail from the Pont Alexander 111.  I have put it in to show just how amazing sculpture such as this golden lion can be missed while concentrating on the more conventional subjects.  
The bridge itself is covered in fine sculptures which would grace any art gallery in the world.
Taking photographs is a fine art in itself as the traffic thunders past.

As I said at the start I could go on and on painting pictures of Paris but this little work is not a definitive study of anything or anywhere --- think of it as a " sampler" and move on.
For anyone interested in French art
I have a site on
www.geocities.com/stomataus
which may be of interest.