One Month, Some Macarons, and a Museum!

The past week and a half has been so busy! With classes almost every day, attending the wrong class by accident, and having a quiz and two tests, I haven’t had time to put together a good blog entry. However, that will be remedied now!

Last Wednesday I was able to celebrate my first month in Arras (weird! I know!). And I did so with deliciousness- six macarons (en français) from a swanky little shop in central Arras. They were amazing- even the weird jasmine and rose ones! The pistachio flavored one was my favorite, in case anyone was wondering.

One of the gorgeous hallways in the museum

The courtyard

Some Plague-related Medieval art

For this week’s adventure, Grace and I decided to hit up the local art museum. It was free, which was awesome, and it showcases a lot of really beautiful, varied, and interesting art- double awesome. Cool, cool, cool (sorry, we’ve been watching a lot of Community…). We were expecting to spend about an hour or so in a nice museum with a small collection, maybe some interesting architecture; but in reality, exhaustion kicked in once we got to the third floor.

The floors are split up by time periods: the first floor is Medieval art, the second 15^th-18^th centuries, and the third floor had a mix of 18^th to 20^th centuries (these are all rough guesses stemming from my three art history classes). The coolest thing about the entire museum was truly the fact that most of the art comes from Arras or features Arras in some form.

I had forgotten how morbid Medieval art can be- the Black Plague really influenced their art. There were a lot of skeletons and skulls throughout the first part of the collection; however, there were also a lot of carvings from the ancient walls from the cathedrals in Arras.

An exotic-type bird

We then were able to see the featured exhibit: carriages and coaches from Versailles! This entire exhibit fascinated me. Upon walking into the first room, they had a huge scaled-down diorama of Arras and paintings that featured both carriages and Arras. Then the hall leads to a section that has a miniature carriage used as a selling piece for Louis XIV to help him choose one to buy. There was a piece on the coaches for children. One of these at the exhibit was a coach for Louis-Charles, the son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

Louis XIV on his way to Arras, with his entourage and coach (which is holding his wife, Marie-Thérèse) 

Coaches that functioned as sleighs were apparently really popular in the 18^th century, as there was a room with at least eight or ten of these carriages.

A carriage built for snow!

The literal 8 to 10 foot high carriage, in all of its golden, gaudy glory

 Finally, we got to see the royal carriages of Louis XVIII and Charles X. These were the gaudiest, the grandest, the most gold, and the biggest carriages. Gold, everywhere. Everywhere. The one must have been 8 to 10 feet high, and I’m really not trying to exaggerate. The final coach was much more reserved, as it was made during one of the Republic periods after one of the revolutions that wanted to expel the grandeur and frivolity and disregard of the monarchies of the 18^th and 19^th centuries.

The top of the carriage, you can see an "N" for Napoléon

Some detail

The giant but beautiful wheel

The steps to the carriage were even too high to step onto easily

Some Arras porcelain!

One of my favorite paintings in this museum

After the carriage exhibition, we explored the rest of the museum. There were tall paintings, tiny paintings, a lot of porcelain from the Pas-de-Calais region, some clocks and fireplaces and chairs, and almost everything in between. 

My favorite pieces of the entire museum were the ones of actual 18^th century dresses; they were just so gorgeous, and anyone who knows my obsession for the movie Marie Antoinette will understand this sentiment. However, the best part was this display of a dress with a painting featuring a woman wearing the exact same dress. So cool.

A beautiful dress

The painting that features the beautiful dress above

My favorite dress

Another beautiful one, pretty much straight out of a Marie Antoinette movie!

 Some other highlights include the various maritime paintings, a few portraits, and just in general enjoyable pre-20^th century art. Definitely worth a visit if you’re in the Arras area, and definitely worth the ridiculous amount of photos I’m posting on this entry.