A Life in Art

Part Three

Outfit changes in Paris

In the late summer of 2013, my family and I were in Paris. Not for very long but if you had seen the amount that I had packed you wouldn’t be thought silly for assuming we were there for the best part of a year.

I was in my first Italian phase. It involved a lot of wide-legged trousers, big sunglasses, head scarves, and anything patterned or in bright colours, mixed with neutrals. I taught myself conversational Italian and had no one to converse with. A few years prior I had received a Vogue subscription for Christmas, and it magically renewed itself every year. I read it obsessively, and when my mum travelled, she would bring me back a copy of Vogue from that country. My collection of magazines was (and is) enormous. The Vogues sat in growing stacks at the bottom of my wardrobe (interspersed with Evo, Car, and Top Gear – my other passion). I’ve always been one to treasure an archive.

So, there we were in Paris, and I was beside myself. I took a change of outfit when we spent the day at Versailles because I couldn’t make up my mind between two looks. My very patient dad carried my outfit change in a backpack.

Of course, with Paris came the art and the architecture. It was in 2013 in Paris, that my interest in architecture really came into its own. Being the daughter of a structural engineer, I had always had an awareness of buildings (and very beautiful and interesting ones at that), but it was Sacre-Coeur Basilica and Notre Dame that turned that interest into a love.

The Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Paris (Sacre-Coeur) is a Roman Catholic church of Roman-Byzantine style, that sits upon the highest point of the city. The views from the dome, across the unusually low-lying city of Paris, are exceptional on a clear day. It was designed by an architect who won a competition to design it in 1873, Paul Abadie. He saw the beginnings of the construction but died in 1984, long before it was completed in 1914. The basilica houses a very large pipe organ, which was originally made for a private home(!) and is a model ahead of its time. Sacre-Coeur is a famous landmark and embroiled in historical and political significance, but often most known for its gleaming whiteness. Abadie chose a white stone from the quarries in Souppes, and it’s the same stone used for the Arc de Triomphe. The stone has a remarkable ‘self-cleaning’ quality because when in contact with water it releases calcite which cleans the stone and whitens it.

Sacre-Coeur can be seen from all across the city, but perhaps one of the most photogenic spots is from a clock window in the Musee D'Orsay.

The Musee D’Orsay, which is ranked second to the Louvre in Paris and in the top fifteen museums globally, was established in 1986 to bridge the gap between the Louvre and the Georges Centre de Pompidou. Housed in a train station which had been completed for the Paris Exposition in 1900, it houses some of the most important Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works in the world.

At 13, I had been reading the sort of books you give to people who are discovering art history. Books that are filled with the famous works of Van Gogh, Cezanne, Monet, Manet, Renoir and Rousseau. Books that are filled with the famous works that live in the Musee D’Orsay. That visit was the first time I can remember seeing an artwork in real life that I had only ever read about. It was wonderful - suddenly all the artworks were alive. I’ve had that experience now countless times and it never grows old! Recently I went to a Pissarro exhibition at the Ashmolean and not only were there 80 works by Pissarro but 40 by his contemporaries and peers; I was enamoured by the expansive range of mediums used by Pissarro, as well as the collaboration with his children and friends.

Since 2013, I have enjoyed many a time that magical moment when you step into a room and see an artwork that you’ve only seen on paper, I wonder when it will happen next.