/fdata%2F4543073%2Favatar-blog-1240322749-tmpphpPAD7g1.jpg){kind=avatar}
On a sunny Saturday morning, when the air was still cool, I cycled across Paris to the Jardin des Plantes to admire the blooming cherry trees. Half of Paris seemed to have decided to do likewise, but it is a Parisian tradition to see the cherry trees. I sat on a bank looking at the trees whilst listening to parents playing with their kids. Yes, I listened as opposed to observed, because most parents seemed to be calling and shouting rather than playing with their kids. I got the impression that the TV series Merlin must have influenced these parents in the choice of names for their off springs because I heard several times the names Arthur and Merlin, though Alexandre also seemed popular.
I then cycled along the Right Bank, down by the Seine where the quay is covered by cobblestones, which makes it rather unpleasant to cycle there! I passed Notre Dame de Paris at noon just in the moment that the new bells, which were put up in connecton with the 800th anniversary, started to ring. What a noise! And it went on and on...... Then I crossed the Seine at the Tuileries Garden and went to my favourite sandwich shop in rue St Honoré for a quick lunch before heading to Place de la Concorde and the Orangerie.
This is now that we get to the stained painters. The current exhibition at Orangerie is about a group of painters working around 1850 - 1874 in Italy. A newspaper journalist had sarcastically described them as Macchiaioli, which refers to the word "stain" which is a reference to the way the artists painted, and thus they became the Macchiaioli.
Whilst Degas, Manet and the people in Barbizon were painting outdoor in France, the Italian painters who were hanging out at the Cafe Michelangiolo in Florence were only beginning to venture out of their studios to capture Italian country life. For an eye used to looking at French impressionism the style of the Macchiaioli remains rather formal and rooted in the renaissance tradition.
What was really interesting was to see how the Macchiaioli were active in wars and politics and were not only interested in pretty girls in beautiful dresses. Painters like Borrani, De Tivoli and Signorini are certainly worth a closer look because once you looker closer, you can see beyond the glossy, pretty countryside with cows and haystacks and the bleeding soldiers and dying horses.
