Proust In Paris

Paris

Along with finding Proust's burial ground, I went to 102 Boulevard Hausmann, now a bank under reconstruction, complete with a commemorate plaque to MP, and also 45 Rue de Courcelles, another residence studied up on; this one had no plaque.

In the course of the days there, much was spent in the glorious Musée d'Orsay, once the Gare d'Orsay, now one of the best museums in the world, if not the best museum of French art in the world. On the 2nd floor, in the section of decorative, high societal arts, is where there is a portrait of Proust in his younger days by Jacques Emile Blanche. Next to him is a tall full length portrait of a coquettish high society woman in fancy dress (like Odette, perhaps.) I noticed the view out the window Proust's portrait had of the Seine and the SW corner of the Louvre, thinking what a place of honor to have one's portrait with a view like this, as if the writer still had eyes to see with, embodied in paint. So I did a quick sketch of Proust's view of Paris from his portrait.

Later in the evening I was in the Louvre. At the end of the hallway of Spanish painters, I wandered over to the window, to catch a glimpse of the Seine at night, shimmering with city lights. After standing at the view for a few minutes, I realized I was staring at the Musée d'Orsay, the building I had been in earlier. A small black rectangle, seen through a window with a solid shape of pointed white contour was clear - at this distance I was looking a Proust's portrait by Jacques Emile Blanche! Positive of this, I sketched this phenomenon, and returned to the Louvre collection refreshed by this curious circumstance of viewing Proust from such a distance and angle!

--Dean Gustafson

The very Seine was all aglow with marvelous life, and the boats cleaving its surface opened up great veins of purple, and in a dazzle of radiance set hovering in the air a precious dust which, for they could not catch it as it drifted, settle down into drifts of gold.

--Jean Santeuil