Architecture  ·  Exteriors  ·  Interiors

Paris 2019

Another great drawing tour from the ICA&A: a week of hard work, some iffy weather (but some lovely afternoons and evenings) and, of course, the amazing architecture only Paris can provide.

We began in studio, loosening up with mono-tone washes over sepia ink sketches—all based on Hubert Robert studies, in the classical Beaux-Artes tradition.

Over the next couple days we worked plein-air in places like the Place des Vosges and the Petit Trianon at Versailles…one of my all-time favorites.  It was raining off-and-on while we were at the Petit Trianon, but that gave us the chance to do interior studies, like the wonderful metal-work of the balustrade in the stair hall.

Then a day at the Biblioteque Saint-Genevieve—not often open to the public—which I like to think of as the first and best piece of transitional architecture, marrying classical elements with Labrousse’s iron-work arches: all very avant-garde for its day (1850), but the quintessential model for public libraries ever since…the Boston Public Library is remarkably similar…

That evening—we were all starting to flag a bit after long days, several folks sniffling and coughing with change-of-season colds—we trouped over to the sculpture gallery at the Louvre, and tried drawing from a statue of the goddess Diana: very challenging to render the cloth, but I tried.

Missing our puppy at home, I couldn’t resist trying another sketch of the dog jumping-up at her feet…I guess Diana, goddess of the hunt, always comes with bow and arrows, and dog(s)…

The last day, we had the chance to step into the Biblioteque Nationale—another Labrousse masterpiece, this one from much later in his career: a much more complex and (and amazing) composition of skylit domes, all supported on febrile cast-iron columns and scrolled arches.  The floral scrolls remind me of some of the classical decoration at the Ara Pacis in Rome.  Like Violette LeDuc, these guys were mixing a scholarly knowledge of classicism, modern materials, and idoms, and—more than a hundred years later—the whole thing feels seamless and natural.  Very inspiring…

They only gave us half an hour to stand in the foyer, sketching—the sea of tables in front of us filled with French graduate student pouring-over who knows what—but that forced me to scribble quickly, no chance to go back in and ruin things by trying to add in too much detail…  That space so deserves someone like Turner to do a watercolor sketch of the light pouring in through those skylights, but it would never be allowed…