Touring the Nantes Art Museum (France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Touring the Nantes Art Museum (France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

The Nantes Art Museum was a much-anticipated destination for me to visit the next day.  The museum is a gem that has works by important artists of almost every period.  I would not say that all works are important, but they were all created by important artists.

Nantes’ history explains where the funds for the collection of items in the art museum came from.  The city’s wealth was built on the slave and sugar trade during the 16^th to the 18^th centuries.

The “armateurs” or traders called the slave trade “the ebony wood” commerce.  Nantes was an active participant in the Triangle Trade of slaves, rum, and cotton for the fashion industry.  Even Voltaire, the champion of liberty had shares in an ebony wood venture.

Nantes transformed itself in the 18^th century for three major reasons:

-the abolition of slavery during the French Revolution

-the French sugar beet replaced sugar cane from the Caribbean as the main source of sugar during the Napoleonic Empire

-boats able to hold larger cargoes had trouble docking at the quay in Nantes

Contemporary industry in Nantes is centered around steel, cookies, and the port business.  The Donges port houses important oil reserves.

The city’s history is a necessary digression to understand how the city of Nantes and its citizens have the money to endow and maintain their lovely museum.

When you enter the museum, you find yourself in a large hallway with Neo-Classical sculpture all around you.  As you walk straight ahead, you find yourself in front of a small landing.

This landing gives you two directional choices.  You can continue walking into the interior courtyard, which is painted white and has arcades opening up onto the second-floor gallery.

Or, you can climb one of the general staircases in white marble on either side of the landing.  Just one of these staircases would have been impressive.

There are two square galleries surrounding a central courtyard, which maximizes wall spaces.  “Old Masters” are located upstairs and “Modern Masters” are located downstairs.

Of the “Old Masters,” I like the portrait of Madame de Sennones by Jean-Dominique Ingres.  The subject, wearing a red velvet dress, has no less than 5 big, ruby rings on her fingers.

This surprised me, since the French bourgeoisie favors restraint in its accessories. 

I had to leave the Museum before I could visit the modern art downstairs.  The Nantes Art Museum has many paintings by Kandinsky, who is an important artist for the advertising industry.

Kandisnsky’s abstract art uses lines and various angles to draw a viewer’s eyes around a painting and to one or more vanishing points.  Advertisements subtly do this as well, which is why Kandinsky is still relevant today as an artist.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

Ruth Paget Selfie