After two days of walking in Frankfurt City Forest and the Taunus mountains, I looked for something different to do, preferably away from the heat. It was getting hotter.
I opted for visiting Städel Museum, which was a short walk from my hotel. It had paintings by old and new masters. I especially wanted to see a new exhibition called Monet on the Normandy Coast.
As usual, I bought a ticket online to bypass any possible queues. Twenty minutes later, after crossing a bridge and a pleasant riverside walk, I was in the museum.
The focus of the Monet exhibition is a French coastal town called Étretat. It captivated many artists in the 19th century and some lived there. Eventually, Monet went there and was mindful of following some great artists, such as Gustave Courbet.
The exhibition notes said there were “twenty-four works by Claude Monet. In addition to works by Eugène Delacroix, Gustave Courbet, and Henri Matisse, the exhibition brings together a host of other important figures in modern and contemporary art, including Johann Wilhelm Schirmer and Eugène Le Poittevin, as well as Camille Corot, Eugène Boudin and Elger Esser.”
It was fascinating seeing different artists painting the same things in Étretat: waves, cliffs, and a rocky needle. Here are some of the paintings:
Even at the time, Étretat was a popular tourist destination. However, no tourists feature. In fact, people are absent in most of the paintings. Some artists excluded them or painted at times when the Normandy coast was mostly deserted. A few artists captured the people who work on the shore, such as the washerwomen. One painting, The Lunatic of Étratat, has a woman hugging a log dressed as a baby. You can read more about the exhibition here.
The permanent galleries were interesting too. The basement was huge and had a varied collection of contemporary art. Here’s a small selection:
I spent about four hours in the museum. The time flew. When I left, I walked along the river then sat down in the shade to have lunch.
I ended the day by returning to the German National Library. I got there at about 6pm, by which time most visitors had left.