Musée Marmottan Monet and Restaurant La Gare in Paris’ Sixteenth

On Tuesday, our third day in Paris (already!), Therese and I ventured to the western district of La Muette, part of the 16th arrondissement, to visit the Musée Marmottan Monet. What drew us to this museum? Well, of course the connection to Claude Monet (more on that in a bit), but also upon doing some research, I learned that the museum also has a connection to Berthe Morisot (more on that as well).

We had gotten a late start that day, in keeping with our “we’re on vacation, let’s relax!” philosophy. Metro line no. 9, or as I call it the “yellow line”, whose Miromesnil stop was very close to our hotel, the Astor St. Honore, took us directly to the La Muette stop. The short walk from the Metro stop to the museum took us past some promising restaurants and through a park, the Jardin du Ranelagh. In this park, we encountered the very curious bronze Statue of Jean de la Fontaine, with its accompanying fox and raven.

I won’t pretend to know exactly what the animals’ significance is – I believe they are mentioned in one of the poet’s most famous writings.

So, on to the museum, which was just on the other side of the park. A few words about the museum, before we talk about the artworks we enjoyed there. It is named, first, after Jules Marmottan, a great patron of the museum. Then there is the connection, again, to Claude Monet. Monet’s son and heir, Michel, gave a number of paintings to the museum, both those of his father and of those artists his father collection (Eugene De la Croix, etc.).

As for Berthe Morisot, she and her family, and that of her descendants, lived in the neighborhood surrounding the museum, and she frequently sketched and painted in the nearby Bois de Boulogne. As a result, in the 1980s, her descendants passed on to the museum the largest collection of Morisot’s drawings and paintings. As one of the few female Impressionist artists, one whose work is not as well-known and ubiquitous as that of the more famous Impressionists (Monet, Degas, Cezanne, Renoir, etc.), it is wonderful to be able to see some of her work and get a better sense of the quality of that work.

The works of Claude Monet at this museum, while a lovely collection – especially focused on some of his late, rather abstract works (from during the time when the artist’s eyesight was in decline) – well, to be short, they didn’t capture my imagination the way many of his most celebrated work does. I think we can say with great confidence that the great art museums of the world – the Met Museum in New York, Philadelphia’s Museum of Art, the Musee d’Orsay in Paris, atc. – have claimed Monet’s greatest works, leaving lesser works for this museum.

In planning to visit this museum, I had been quite intrigued to hear about their temporary exhibit, focusing on the figural work of Piet Mondrian (1872-1944). If you have heard anything of Mondrian, you probably know the geometric, abstract works for which he is known. I had no idea that, before devoting himself to exclusively creating such art, he had actually had a very substantial career (if less celebrated) creating figural work – portraits, landscapes, and a series of rather dramatic paintings of windmills. So it was a revelation to learn about this part of Mondrian’s oeuvre.

Before leaving this lovely mid-sized museum, of which we explored a great deal, I should say that it doesn’t just house late-19th and early 20th-century art. In addition to the earlier works collected by Monet and donated by his son, there are works covering a number of earlier centuries, going all the way back to the Middle Ages. Of the works from this “other” category, the one that impressed me the most was the center of a triptych that shows Jesus Christ accompanying his mother the Virgin Mary on her assumption into heaven. The way she leans her head on his shoulder for support is quite touching, I think.

Having enjoyed the museum for a couple of hours, Therese and I were hungry for some lunch. What to do? Walking back toward the square, along the Chausee de la Muette, we discovered that the restaurant I had picked, called simply La Gare, had finished its lunch service and was now just doing drinks. That was likely to be the situation with most restaurants, ugh. But while we were there, we learned they had a second larger restaurant downstairs, and we made a reservation to return there for dinner later.

In the meantime, we were still hungry. Luckily, a nearby brasserie on the square, called the Tabac de la Muette, was serving. So we stopped there for some light fare. I think I got sausages and frites, and Therese had something similar. It was lovely to be sitting at a table outside, enjoying, for example, a beautiful apartment building on Avenue Mozart across from us. Therese mused on whether we might be able to afford an apartment in that most excellent building, and we imagined a life living here in the Sixteenth…

The highlight for me was probably when I returned from using the WC. The sky had opened up, and one of the servers had unfurled the awning to protect those of us sitting outside. As one of the few places to avoid getting drenched, a huge number of people had come to join us, huddling for protection. I was unable to get back to our table, standing instead in the midst of the crowd. There was a collegial feeling, as we all smiled and waited out the deluge.

Once the rain was done, and our small meal was over, it was time to explore this neighborhood and kill some time before our dinner reservation. First order of business was to find a post office where we could mail some postcards. While for most people, this is no longer a thing one does – all you have to do is wait for me to post some photos on Instagram to know what we have been doing, right? For older folks, specifically my Mom, it is comforting to still receive postcards. Actually, she had asked us to send her some postcards when we were in France. So we did.

The post office we found, for the Passy District (the area is known variably as La Muette, Passy and Ranelagh – I don’t quite get which name has preference over the others…), was quite striking, an Art Deco sort of structure to our eyes.

Having mailed our postcards, we now wandered the neighborhood, stopping in a number of shops on the main streets and enjoying being footloose, with nothing in particular to do for the next few hours other than eat up that time. I remember stopping in a couple of pharmacies that we came across, searching for a particular brand of reading glasses for Therese (neither one had the ones we wanted, but they did seem to know what we were talking about). I also think I bought some amazing chocolate in one of the shops – I think we also sat down and had some ice cream/sorbet there as well (wait – weren’t we supposed to be working up an appetite for dinner? why would we have stopped for sorbet? wouldn’t that be counterproductive? Friends, there is no logic to this story. Lasciate ogni esperanza…)

Eventually, the sun was going down, and it was time for our dinner. Back to the Restaurant La Gare we went. The restaurant was very interesting – the menu had food from various cultures/cuisines, like tacos and sushi and ceviche. But while for most restaurants, covering so much ground and not focusing on being good at just one thing is a sure recipe for disaster, in this case, it worked. We had a lovely dinner.

As we exited the restaurant, we turned and looked, and there it was, the Eiffel Tower – a “sighting!” as we call it. Another perfect day in Paris.

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