Tuesday, 10 October, Musée Bourdelle, Bellefeuille

Written 22 November 2023

At the left, the array of cold cuts, cheeses, yogurts, cut fruit, juices, and water (still and sparkling). At the far end, a big bin of plain crusty rolls.

At the right, the "Viennoiseries": plain croissants and pains au chocolat. The paper bags are full of prunes, other dried fruitm sprinkles for the yogurt and cut fruit, and crumbled "speculoos" cookies. Beyond them is an untidy pile of American-style leavened pancakes (note the bottle of actual maple syrup). American-style pancakes have recently become something of a thing in France, to the point where my supermarket in Tallahassee now carries, in addition to crêpes, bags of individually wrapped "French pancakes"! About as authentic as "home style" chicken nuggets.

Our expedition for the day was to the studio and museum of Antoine Bourdelle (1861–1929), a student of Rodin's. He's called a sculptor in English, but French speakers would insist that he was instead a "modeller," like Rodin. That is, he shaped his works out of clay, plaster, or wax, then cast bronzes in molds made from them. (As opposed to, e.g., Michelangelo, a real sculptor because he shaped his works by cutting them out of solid stone.)

The museum is near the Montparnasse Tower, just a couple of stops on the 92 bus from our hotel.

The plaster hall was closed for "technical reasons" while we were there, but we could peer into it and take photos through its glass doors. In the view at the left here, note in particular the huge horseman on the left-hand side. It's the final plaster model for a monument to General Alvear (who was, according to Wikipedia, "one of the few professional military officers to participate in the Argentine War of Independence on the side of the revolutionaries"). If I stood on the pedestal, my head might come up to his stirrup.

Also note, on the right-hand side, lower down, the archer with bow and full stretch and his foot up on a rock. These two works are probably Bourdelle's best known.

The photo at the right shows a hallway lined with a long series of studies (in a variety of media) of faces with open mouths.

At the left here is Bourdelle's protrayal of Rodin. He and Rodin apparently shared mutual respect, but as Bourdelle's style developed, Rodin was shocked by some of his departures from tradition.

And here at the right is the amazing "Herakles [i.e., Hercules] Archer." In one of the inside rooms, we saw a photograph (from behind) of Commandant Doyen-Parigot, "a splendid athlete," posing for it.

One example was this pink-flowered Chinese shrub called "seven-sons tree"(Heptacodium miconioides, in the honeysuckle family).

Another was the white heath aster (Symphyotrichum ericoides, a composite native to the U.S.), cheek by jowl with the foliage of a Mediterranean spurge (Euphorbia characias ssp. wulfenii). The plants were not, alas, labeled, but my handy "Picture This" app identified them for me.

The museum is free, so we could come and go. At lunch time, we checked out its in-house lunchroom, but nothing there appealed to us. Back out on the street, just a few doors from the museum entrance, we found the Montparnasse Café.

David ordered the salade camagnarde—lettuce, tomato, raw ham, lardons, dry salami, and a poached egg. I had the salade Périgourdine—lettuce, tomato, lots of confit chicken gizzards, toasts topped with slices of magret fumé (i.e., smoked duck breast), and a fat slice of duck liver pâté in the middle (minus the wedge I let David cut out of it). Both were dressed with that excellent creamy mustard vinaigrette that I can't seem to duplicate at home.

After lunch we went back to finish touring the museum. At the left here is a bust of French poet Auguste Quercy (1853–1899). My impression, from the internet, is that he's now more famous as the subject of this bust than for his poetry.

The piece at the right is entitled "War, or Three Howling Heads." Pretty self-explanatory.

Two more smaller pieces were this figure of Honoré Daumier, the first "proof" casting for a "monument project," perhaps Daumier's funeral monument?

And on a wall hung this arresting head of Medusa, suspended by her braided, snake-headed tresses. It's actually a door knocker, designed so that the figure of Perseus on the door held up the head, and each stroke of the knocker fell on the shield he held. It was commissioned by a firm of locksmiths.

Finally, a couple of rooms were devoted to technique and process, both Bourdelle's in particular and those of other artists using similar methods.

A long series of panels, starting with the one shown here, "modeling," illustrated the steps in going from the artist's initial plaster model through the many stages of transforming it into a finished bronze casting. Bourdelle used one foundry for bronzes he wanted sand cast and a different one if he wanted the lost-wax technique.

And at the right is a sampling of different materials and finishes involved in the work of sculptors (including modelers).

When our feet gave out, we strolled back to the bus stop for the ride home, and as we waited, a convoy of at least a dozen bully loaded CRS (i.e., riot police) cars and then an ambulance all zoomed by, headed south, the same direction we would be traveling. We never saw them again, so the problem must have been farther out of the center of things than our hotel. Something to do with rugby hooligans, maybe?

Our last (and, as it turned out, least) tasting menu before leaving Paris was at a restaurant called Bellefeuille (beautiful leaf), located inside the Saint James Paris, which claims to be the only château hotel within the city. Its stone gate, circular driveway with fountain, and entrance are certainly grandiose enough.

The amuse bouches were many and varied and, as is fasionable these days, served on rocks and pieces of wood. Left to right, they were crispy fried squash blossoms garnished with little cones made of thin apple slices, little crispy cylinders garnished with pink cosmos petals, and little tartlets of something green topped with cute bottoms-up nasturtium blossoms.

The flatware was also served on a rock, this one shaped for the purpose. Of course, when a later course called for a fish knife, it wouldn't fit in the little center groove and had be to balanced on top.

The table was decorated with this lovely bisque porcelain "veilleuse" (nightlight) with a real candle in it. I loved the pattern of sweet peas.

The menu was very confusing—only about 20% of the words on it actually said (very tersely) what the food was. The rest was headings and subheadings like "from our kitchen garden in Nonville [an hour's drive south on the A6 from Paris]; an end to summer, the fruits are engorged with sun" and "evoking the banks of a stream on the Plateau de Cézallier in the shade of the blackthorns."

The first two courses (from the kitchen garden) were very good. First, we had "coeur de boeuf" ("beef heart") tomatoes in three forms—a thick, peeled, lightly poached slice; a slice of a tomato tart layered with dried, confit, and raw tomatoes; and (on top of the first part) a disk of tomato-water ice. All were flavored with tansy (an herb I know mainly as being a good ant repellent), and all were excellent. They were accompanied by a tiny brown cup of tomato kefir, which was not such a much. I'm not usually a fan of kefir, especially nondairy ones, and this one didn't change my mind.

Next we got smoked beets (also from the kitchen garden) and caviar. At the left is the dish as served, and at the right the same thing after I'd cut out a wedge to reveal the caviar inside. Good but not great.

And here I begin to lose track. I assume the green sauce with the fish is made from berce greens, but what is the gray stuff in the wooden bowl? The cooked and puréed roots? Both the menu and my notes are silent on the subject.

Next came "lobster with wild fennel." It must be a really bad season for lobster, because once again, langoustine tails stood in for it. Still, the dish was very good.

Then chaos set in. The menu goes straight from lobster to squid, but my photos show three intervening dishes that I can't actually identify. The first is shown here at the right. I'm pretty sure it's the slices of abalone I remember as being almost too tough to chew.

Written 23 November 2023

And here. Is that a lump of sweetbreads at the left, with a slice of potato and caviar on top? Or is it monkfish? Probably the latter, as they wouldn't stick a meat dish between two seafood courses.

At the right, I'm pretty sure that's a chunk of fish (cod maybe), and I think it's seaweed on top, but what are the sauces and the stuff to the side?

Then it was back to courses actually listed. At the left here is what the menu called "squid/ink" and the waiter described proudly as "half-cooked" and flavored with ginger. It's a thick piece of squid mantle scored into decorative squares and coiled into a cone. A couple of tentacles from a much smaller squid have been tucked into the enter so that they spill out and trail into the pool of squid ink. I found the texture sticky and disagreeable (and I usually love squid, both cooked and raw). The ink was very iodine-flavored. I agreed that both were better in combination than separately, but not what I'd call a good dish.

At the right is "duck/sloe." Sloe (as in "sloe gin") is the fruit of the blackthorn, mentioned above. It's in the rose family, like apples and plums. The dish was a thick slice of rare duck breast dressed with two sauces, a light-colored foamy one, and the dark (presumably sloe) one.

Predessert was honey-vanilla bonbons served on a honeycomb-shaped dish, described on the menu only as "in the heart of the hives."

The actual dessert was described as "autumn squash, rose hip, and saffron." It featured winter-squash ice cream, a saffron sauce, and (I guess) something rose-hip flavored—the red sauce you can see peeking out maybe. On top was a tangle of crispy, tender, pleasantly flavored stuff I couldn't identify. My best guess is very thin shavings of winter squash, fried or dehydrated. It was the best part of the dish.

Here's the assortment of wines David accumulated from the course-by-course pairing—seven of them, not counting the saki.

I know these very highly rated chefs are all trying to push the envelope, but I think this one pushed it a little too far.