I suppose one could go on for days posting “X of the Louvre” posts… eldest son has a thing for the big cats, though, especially tiggies, so I’m now drawn to them when I see them and ended up photographing lots of kitties. And dragons for younger son, but in France most images of dragons involved killing them which I thought was just wrong.
These are Delacroix’s tigers which are just stunning. Delacroix is an amazing artist, who I think is often overlooked. Fortunately the French are crazy about him, since he pretty well documented the French Revolution, so they have a lot of his work on exhibit. I must post the picture hubby took of me taking the picture to give you the size scale, though. Hubby’s other Louvre photos are here. Many of Delacroix’s works are just huge, far larger even than this. The Louvre is chock full of huge paintings, though, since a lot of these works were done to fill large palace and church walls and rich people’s mansions. Artists were supported by the church or royalty or wealthy patrons, and mostly did commissioned works for them. So they are BIG.
Delacroix seemed to really have a thing for cats — they show up in a lot of his work. And they are beautiful, always. The detail is fabulous, too.
This last little guy was one of my favorites. The big googly eyes just made it for me. And he’s really ancient, too!
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| Statue of a lion Beginning of the second millennium BC Mari (Tell Hariri), Syria Beaten copper; eyes inlaid with shale and limestone H. 38 cm; W. 70cm; D. 50 cm André Parrot excavations, 1937 AO 19520, AO 19824 Near Eastern Antiquities |
2 Responses
The envy of you at the louvre is doing me permanent mental damage. My attorney will be in touch with you shortly. We should be able to work out a reasonable settlement for my suffering. No need for us to clutter up the court system, eh?
I find it strange that you can copy in the Louvre, and the Met in NYC but not at the Getty or Norton Simon. Why not? I think it would be so instructive and fun to copy paintings that you like.
Hi WR Jones,
I don’t know why some museums have the no copying policy. I know the ones working at the Louvre were art students with special permission. I think with these paintings they are so old and well known it doesn’t hurt for someone to copy them, no one would mistake them for the originals — the size alone would be difficult to match on many of these paintings! Perhaps the works at the Getty and Norton Simon are much more recent, perhaps even by living artists? Which would mean they have copyright issues… I seem to recall the Met had mostly older works as well.
And hey, I certainly envy your painting ability! I only wish I were half so talented…