May 11, 2016
Day 9
Since the weather was predicted to be rainy and cooler today, our day was spent visiting museums. First, we drove into Nice to visit the Marc Chagall Biblical Message Museum and the Musee Henri Matisse. Also, we visited the Villa Ephrussi de Rothchild, the former home of the Baroness Beatrice de Rothchild which located at Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat–which just down the street from our rental.
Marc Chagall’s museum is devoted to a series of bible story interpretations that are layered with jewish culture and his own personal past. I won’t pretend to comprehend all of the uses of symbolism and metaphor after a few hours of audioguide descriptions, but I can say that his creativity in storytelling through use of color, form and symbolism are unsurpassed in anything I have ever experienced. It was mezmorizing.
From Chagall’s museum, we went to Musee Henri Matisse. No photos allow! So nothing much to show except the exterior of the museum. The main impression of the story to tell about the museum the collection. It was chronologically laid out to give us a sense of his development as an painter. An unknown piece of his personal history to me was that he was educated to be a lawyer but changed his profession to become a painter after a long illness made it difficult to continue as a lawyer. I think he made a good choice.
We ended the day with a tour of the Baroness Beatrice de Rothschild’s home called Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild on Saint-Jean-Cap Ferrat. The name Rothschild alone should give you some idea about the character of the home. Her story is pretty amazing in and of itself an would make a pretty interesting story for a film. Her life centered around collecting art from the 18th century, race car driving (she drove), gambling and a few rumored afairs. The beauty of the house, though, was equaled by beautiful gardens with collections of plants from all over the world. What a way to live!
A final word for all of you that have notices that I’m a day out of sync with the real calendar. I’m trying to catch up before we head to Paris tomorrow so the next post will pretty much just be photos from our trip to Saint-Paul de Vence and a little walk around the harbor at Staint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat.