Just In Time

We arrived in Paris just before the final day to see this!  Saturday morning, July 20th was the morning of our arrival and we spent a full day going from place to place on the metro nursing our jet lag by staying busy. 

We had been looking forward to seeing the Boudin exhibition for quite awhile so we set out early the next day for the Musee Jacquemart-Andre,  arriving thirty minutes before the museum opened. We saw the beautiful sign in the picture above on the stone wall outside (along with a rapidly growing line of people). The line began moving at 10:00 am and in no time we were inside. 

Boudin was born in Honfleur, France in 1824 and was a marine painter, one of the first French landscape painters to paint outdoors. He was an expert in rendering the sea and anything along the shore.  He urged his young friend, Monet, to come to Honfleur to see the light and paint there with a group of artists who had begun painting at the beach.  When Monet finally visited Boudin, he understood what he had been talking about and years later still claimed to owe much to his friend Eugene Boudin.

After enjoying the exhibition, we had lunch in the elegant cafe inside the museum. It seemed only fitting to order the "Honfleur Salad" with shrimp and crabmeat. It was delicious!