Vaudeville ☕️ Salon du Dessin ✍️ Palais Royal 🌸

 

Moules, master drawings and magnolias.

I met JULIA for lunch at le Vaudeville. 29, rue Vivienne, 75002

Have you been?

Can you get more classic French 🇫🇷 Brasserie than this?

I think I ate both our desserts ! 

Île Flottante + soupe du mangue 🥭 with mango sorbet.

Then we crossed the street for opening day of SALON DU DESSIN at Palais Brongniart.

It’s a 5-day affair. 

Many of the dealers were eating at Le Vaudeville. 

We heard the waiters saying,

”À demain.” (See you tomorrow)

Photo c/o Salon du Dessin

400 dealers showing over 1,000 works for the 34th edition of the Salon.

Both contemporary 

And ancient. 

Remember those 18th century dresses last week.

I fell hard for these small Bonnard pencil ✏️ doodles 

In a ring-bound notebook. Pets à table…

We both flipped for this tiny, exquisite 3” brown ink drawing, impossible to see without taking a photo of it.

Jean Valor Le Jeune (1616 - 1675) Flandres (8,000 EUR)

An architectural rendering by Proudhon.

Reminded me of caryatids I’d seen on Rue de 4 Septembre walking to the restaurant. 

Julia says I should do a Paris Letter of Caryatids. 

Oui 👍 or non 👎 ?

After 2 hours, I couldn’t see 👁️ straight and it became crowded. Parisians LOVE ❤️ drawings ✍️ and this is Drawing Week in Paris!

Moving along to the magnolias 🌸 at Palais-Royal,

The subject of the March Paris Letter.

After changing my mind half a dozen times 🤔

Then I was going to show all the famous people  of Palais Royal like Cardinal Richelieu…it used to be called Palais Richelieu in 1624 when it was built.

But the magnolias won out.

By the way, I think the ‘IN’ Paris dog is the Chihuahua.

They are everywhere. Anyhoo…

Here is Palais Royal in days of yore.

Jack Lang, whilst at the ministry of Culture, brought in the Colonnes de Buren (formerly a parking lot). He wanted something interesting to look at out his window 🪟 

And in 1990, Lang brought in an American landscaper, Mark RUDKIN to upgrade the gardens - adding 16 Asian magnolia trees and rearranging the flower beds to add more sitting areas.

The Palais Royal gardens changed dramatically to the elegant, relaxing, serene garden it is today, located to the right of la Comédie Française, 

8 rue de Montpensier, 75001.

Et voila