Melting crayons or candles

We woke up this morning to a very strange smell in the apartment.  Checked the hallway and stairwell, but the smell was definitely stronger in our apartment.  The closest I can come to describing the strange smell is that it is as if someone were melting crayons or perhaps the shrink wrap machine has got too hot.  That latter was because we have a paper shop below us.  

Finally we decided to get away from the smell and went out to Franprix.  There on the street next to us (Bosquet) in front of the Officer's Bar and Restaurant where three fire engines.  A police car was stopped blocking off the entire street.  Naturally neither of us had a camera.

We apparently were there just for the tail end of whatever was going on.  One fire truck left and when I returned to the apartment from the store the street was cleared of all emergency and police vehicles.  

I have told my secretary, the Professor, to send and email to 'Ree-shard' to see if he knows what is going on.  

The apartment smells less like toxic fumes, so I guess we will be okay.  However, after eating at home for two days in a row, I think we will go out to lunch.  

We do not know if the problem was at the cafe building or the building around the corner from it.

musee Bourdelle

On our way to Montparnasse to see another museum.

The sky is so beautiful.  Two hours later les invalides was still bathed in light

but there were black threatening clouds behind it.  I am so sorry now

that we did not take the second picture with the clouds.

The Musée Bourdelle is an art museum located at 18, rue Antoine Bourdelle.  It contains a huge collection of the artists work.  It also has a glimpse at his atelier or his studio.  Until we visited the 

museum and I started reading about Bourdelle I had no idea that his work is apparently well

known.  He has art pieces in the MMOA in NYC and at the Hirshorn in Washington, D.C.  Plus works in Japan and Argentina and at Stanford University to name just a few.  

He was contemporary of Rodin and some of his works show Rodin's influence. " September 1893 Antoine Bourdelle joined Rodin as his assistant where he soon became a popular teacher, both there and at his own studio where many future prominent artists attended his classes, so that his influence on sculpture was considerable."

  

Orpheus leaning on his lyre

Room from the original house

Garden just inside the museum

Crouching Bather

Influenced by Rodin's work

The Dying Centaur

Penelope the wife of Ulysses or

Melancholy

These faces and the hand below are part of a memorial to the warriors

who found in the France-Prussia war around 1870.

This copy of Hercules drawing his bow is in the front garden.

Thanks to Philippe Walter I now am aware that a copy of Bourdelle's Hercules is

in the musee d'Orsay

Notice Hercules on the right and Alvear's horse on the left.

Casts of busts

I believe this is La France in the background

Bourdelle created more than 80 sculptures of Beethoven.  

Madame (mme) Zetlin

Jeanne Prinet

I liked this small statue of a portrait of a sculptress

at work.

Adam Mickiewicz a Polish poet

We have not been here but apparently this is the finished statue in memory of 

Mikiewicz located at Paris, cours Albert-Ier.

He reminds me of  the thinker.  

Adam, by Emile-Antoine Bourdelle,

Rodin at work

In the top left hand corner is a picture of Bourdelle when he was 17.

There are several copies of this "Virgin and Child" at the museum.  Some in plaster

others cast as these are. We were very interested in the Virgin's head covering.  As in several other

of his works, the scarf looks a lot like an Egyptian head dress.  I don't think it

had anything to do with the fact that he was married to a Greek woman named Cleopatra. 

These stairs in the studio are more like a ladder leaning against the wall

than a real flight of stairs.

As I have been reading online about Antoine Bourdelle, I have discovered that the 

Professor and I are familiar with some of his art without even knowing it.  This large

statue of La France is at the museum of modern art that we went to.  The building is known as the

Tokyo Palace.

Antoine Bourdelle, ca.1922,Monument La France, H. 9 m, bronze (Hohwiller founder), erected 18 June 1948, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Palais de Tokyo

Another bust that we must find is one of Eiffel located at the tower.