Memories at the Met

Today I got up the courage to tackle the Metropolitan Museum. The queue wasn't too bad, only about 10 minutes' wait (I knew better than to try checking my coat), and I had a somewhat limited but sensible plan: head straight for he Impressionists (the purple bits on the map).

I had already had a goodly sample of other periods:  medieval art at the Cloisters, Old Masters at the Frick, and Expressionism at the Neue Galerie, with MOMA to come next week. (Cubism at the Met opens to the public then too.) So as one does at giant museums, I strode purposefully past assorted wonders until I got to Degas in Room 810, with only a couple of stops to check I was going the right way.

It's not only the marvellously rich, warm, human paintings themselves - It's the associations they have. So there was one of Monet's many studies of Rouen Cathedral, this time bathed in midday sun. Harvey and I saw the cathedral in Rouen in 1999. We'd seen a group of these paintings before then, I think in Paris.

http://www.wikiart.org/en/claude-monet/rouen-cathedral-portal-in-the-

There were Giverny paintings too - one of the earlier water lily pictures, two very late almost abstract ones, and a path bordered with irises. Plus a vase of chrysanthemums. Thanks to our English friends who brought their car across to join us in Rouen, we managed to get to Giverny on the last day it was open, when the summer flowers had gone but the water lilies were still there - and swathes of chrysanthemums. 

http://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chrysanthemums_(Monet).JPG

http://www.wikiart.org/en/claude-monet/path-through-the-irises-01-1917#supersized-artistPaintings-212188

I am so fortunate to have seen all this, and to have shared so much of it with Harvey. He had been to the Met himself earlier, and I know he went to see these paintings. Such pleasure.