Inspiration of artists – Montmartre

Our last day in Paris, we took a guided tour of Montmartre, ending at the Basilique du Sacré Coeur.

More about the tour in a minute. First, we had to get our luggage to the train station to store it before the tour. Our AirBnB checkout was 11:00, tour started at 10:30, and our train leaving Paris wasn’t until 2:20. So we had some logistics to manage. We find the signs and arrows in the Paris metro confusing at times, and there are very rarely metro staff in a station. Also, the main train station’s tourist info booth was closed and unstaffed today.

Plus, there is a lot under construction right now in Paris to prepare for the Olympics next year. We asked for directions to the general Gare du Nord information desk and followed them only to find the whole office under construction. It was quite stressful.

Between the three of us and kindly security workers, we figured out what we needed to do. Eventually, we successfully stored our luggage, got to the tour on time and got back to the station on time for our train.

Now back to the tour.

Our tour guide, Corey Frye, aka French Frye in Paris, has lived in Paris 14 years. Originally from the U.S., his background is art history and music. He matched up a lot of the places in Montmartre with paintings by Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Renoir and other artists.

We highly recommend him as a tour guide.

The Montmartre area was actually rural and outside of the Paris city limits until 1860 when it was annexed by Paris. As it developed, it became home to cabaret shows and dance halls. There aren’t very many left, but here is one you may know…

Moulin Rouge translates as red windmill.

This area actually had a lot of windmills, still being a rural area. And Van Gogh liked to paint them.

This windmill has been preserved. It also inspired Van Gogh, who knew it in more rural times.

Corey shows us Van Gogh’s painting of this same windmill.

As Montmartre developed, it became a place for poor artists like Van Gogh and later Picasso, as well as working class families who worked in the factories of the Iron Age.

Picasso’s first studio in Paris as a young artist. He met his first wife here.

This church is unlike any others in Paris. It was built by working class people, and the architecture, in my opinion, reflects their experience as steel and construction workers. The church is Église Saint-Jean de Montmartre.

Here are some additional scenes from Montmartre, with some explanations.

As mentioned, Paris is getting spiffed up for the Olympics. These restorers are cleaning an art wall. The I Love You Wall has 600+ square tiles with the words “I love you” in different languages.

This sculpture is dedicated to the French author Marcel Aymé, who lived on this square. He wrote the short story *The Man Who Walked through Walls.*

This wall art is by the anonymous artist, Invader. He/she installs wall tiles to look like old space invader video games. This was right next to Sacré Coeur.

This was also an area where many Nazi’s lived during their occupation of Paris in WWII.

Corey shows us a picture of a building that had been a café for Nazi soldiers. It’s now a Five Guys. If you zoom in on Corey’s iPad, you can see the swastika on the building.

I thought these chimneys looked cool with foggy Eiffel Tower in the background.

There were so many other wonderful stops on this tour, but I will close with Corey showing us Picasso’s version of Sacré Coeur and the inspiration just above.

From The Met: “The construction of Paris’s monumental Sacré Coeur Basilica atop Montmartre lasted from 1875, when the first stone was laid, until 1914. Part of this time Picasso lived nearby, and he would have seen the gleaming white edifice on a regular basis.”

No wonder so many great artists spent time in Paris. It is a city that inspires.

Inspiration of artists – Montmartre

Share this:

Leave a comment Cancel reply