Asian art and the Nympheas from Claude Monet: Paris museums part 2!

Every first Sunday of the month the museums in Paris welcome visitors for free... As I was there on one I combined the biggest collection of Asian art in Europe and waterlilies-impressionism in one day.

A breathtaking insight into the culture of the Asian continent offers the Musée Guimet! I was impressed by an exotique mix of enormous Cambodgian stone carving, Indian colours and Nepalese book covers. The Chinese treasures (out of stone, wood, jade) let us discover different periods and a whole new world...Some scary objects were for example the Tibetian bowl made out of human skull (on the picture below)! I was pleasantly suprised how a museum visit helps us to travel far away even if just for some hours:)

In the Musée de l'Orangerie (in the down left corner of the Tuileries gardens) I admired one of the largest (according to their length of up to 15 meters!) waterlilies paintings of Claude Monet (1840-1926). The French impressionist have painted approximately 250 oil paintings with Nympheas (waterlilies).

Those pieces of art depict Monet's flower garden at Giverny and were the main focus of Monet's artistic production during the last thirty years of his life. Many of the works were painted while Monet suffered from cataracts. A pair of two oval rooms (the first floor of Musée de l'Orangerie) are nowadays home of 8 long waterlily murals.