Dial M for Marmottan

Another cold--really cold--and cloudy Paris day, so how to bring some cheer into a dreary day? The best thing we could think of was to go to the Marmottan Museum in a leafy residential part of the city and see the sunny and cheerful Monets. The museum also has a collection of paintings by Berthe Morisot, a female artist who was mentored by Corot and more or less adopted by the Impressionist gang. An added bonus was a temporary exhibit of female painters and salons in the time of Proust, who frequented the salons and based many of his characters on the aristocrats, composers, writers, and artists who attended them. Monet's 'Impression, Sunrise' in the basement of the Marmottan was the closest we came to seeing the sun today, but we didn't mind.