PARIS C’EST MAGNIFQUE, DESPITE NOTRE DAME FIRE

Mark Clairmont | MuskokaTODAY.com

TORONTO — Fascination with Paris has never been higher after the fire at the Notre Dame in Paris.

The saving grace is the 856-year-old church will be rebuilt for future generations to gaze upon its towering architectural beauty and admire it as others have for nine centuries.

Among them, artists such as Monet, Degas and Pissarro.

Some of the greatest artists of all time have shown their passion and creativity as they depicted their beloved Paris while it was being transformed by the modern age.

That’s the story behind, Impressionism in the Age of Industry: Monet, Pissarro and more on at the Art Gallery of Ontario until May 5.

Claude Monet’s Arrival of the Normandy Train, 1877, propels viewers with its captivating steam train hissing and chugging into the station.

The exhibit explores how French Impressionist artists and their contemporaries, famous for their lush landscapes and sea vistas, were equally obsessed with capturing the spirit of the industrial age. It features more than 120 artworks, including paintings, photographs, prints, drawings, sculptures and period films.

With masterpieces by beloved artists like Monet, Pissarro, Degas, Van Gogh, Cassatt and Seurat, the exhibition also highlights new favourites like Luce and Caillebotte.

It hails a coming of age in France and Europe, with the city of love and lights at its heart, portrayed from the gritty coal being carried from a barge on the Seine River to the genteel  Avenue des Champs-Élysée.

Claude Monet’s Arrival of the Normandy Train, Gare Saint-Lazare, 1877, propels viewers with its captivating steam train hissing and chugging into the station.

Vincent van Gogh’s Factories at Clichy is beautifully representative of the emergence of industrial life. Among tidy red-roofed homes of the French countryside and the green fields in the foreground, its dominant smokestacks stretch and protrude so high into the sky that their dark, sooty plumes merge as one to taint the contrasting wispy white clouds.

And while Gustave Eiffel’s iconic tower is seen from everywhere throughout, and beautifully represented in Parisian post-impressionist George Seurat’s 1889 piece, Notre Dame is cast deep in the shadow of all of the greats.

This is just the tip of the AGO iceberg, which features thousands of artworks, including sharply contrasting Canadians Lawren Harris and Tom Thomson.

Both explore Canadiana inside out, from Algonquin Park to Arctic shores.

A personal favourite is always a visit into the many galleries of playful paintings by French Canadian artist Cornelius Krieghoff.

A complementary sojourn I find to be more than tres bien — it’s c’est magnifique.

With spring floods and a melting ice cap, now is also an appropriate time to remind yourself of our own majestic natural cathedrals.

Enjoy the best of both.

Lois Cooper examines Vincent van Gogh’s Factories at Clichy, a captivating and simply stunning study in the beauty of ordinary life.
Monet’s softly silhouetted bridge is a combination of a haze of mist or pollution.
A snow melt by Tom Thomson is a vivid reminder of Muskoka in spring – as gentle snow melts into raging rivers.
Lawren Harris’ northern landscapes standout with freshness that shows what Canada’s north could soon lose.
A stroll across this bridge in Paris is a reminder of way high society France once was and the conflicts within its best and most desperate.
The Eiffel Tower is as ageless and iconic as Notre Dame, both of which represent Paris at its best.
The 1990 World Expo in Paris was the dawning of a century of hope that sadly took a deadly turn just over a decade later.