I fell in love with a new artist at the Musée d'Orsay today.

This was painted for the library of the Princess of Bassiano. I have no idea who she is, and google doesn't really either. But she was a princess. And this painting is enormous.

Isn't it beautiful? I'm going to be a nerd and say that I like the whole thing about Adam and Eve, about gaining knowledge, about the fact that they are in a library. The colors and texture of the paint are just really gorgeous.

And all of the figures that are so colorful in the background, those women with furs and expensive fabrics, and the man and his daughter talking, and the woman who has just finished her tea, and the little cute dog at the bottom and the newspapers that have spilled on to the floor. All of the things are so colorful, and then you realize that what your eye has been aching to go to after looking at the color and the shapes and the almost naked painting, is that one girl in the front, the girl that is black and somber and beautiful.



And you realize that that is you, that is you when you're watching, when you're learning, when you're reading, when you're thinking.

and you wish you had that beautiful profile of hers, and you know how she feels, and you know that really, you are actually her. And you feel like you need to sit down next to her, or you wish she had written a book so you could read what she was thinking, but you can't do any of these things, so you stand there for a while with your mouth open and just look at the flat canvas, and people walk behind you and to the side of you and look at the painting for a few seconds, and then look at you, and then back at the painting, and then of their maps and they keep walking. And then you pull out your camera and take pictures and fake swear in your head about the fact that the colors are totally off.

That painting that I'm going to have copied for my library when I grow up was painted by Edouard Vuillard, and so are these little beauties that I went rabidly searching for after falling in love with that first painting and needing more of Vuillard. I was pleasantly surprised:

The second one was painted after the chapel at Versailles. Isn't it lovely? If you get a chance if you visit the Musée D'Orsay, please see these. Or try to plan some time to spend looking at paintings and painters you have never heard of. I realize that not everyone has time to do that with limited visiting time in Paris. So, I am thankful for that. Very much so.

And that I didn't die when I almost got hit by a bus because I was an idiot. I am very grateful for that.