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P aris has always been a source of inspiration for artists and dreamers. From poets to painters, professionals to dilettantes, the city has long served as a living, breathing studio for creativity. Nowhere is this more evident than in the work of the singular artists featured in The Blaquier-Arrieta Collection who pondered, played, and painted in the City of Light. Drawing inspiration from everything from its racetracks to nearby bucolic towns, ballet students and cabaret performers, traces of their timeless vision of Paris still exist—if you know where to look.
One of the original flâneurs, Paris-born Edgar Degas is synonymous with the city. He spent much of his life capturing the urban, haute bourgeois lifestyle in a thrilling state of 19th-century flux. Best known for his ballerinas, Degas fans can visit the Palais Garnier, where he painted and sketched dancers (though many of his most famous ballet-themed works are set in the older Paris Opéra, the Salle Le Peletier, on Rue Le Peletier, which burned down in 1873).
Degas is also celebrated for his equestrian work, as seen in the spectacular pastel Avant la course, on sale at the Evening Auction. In his early years, he spent time studying and sketching horses, much as he studied plaster casts of the Parthenon Frieze, which are still held by the Musée du Louvre. He was also a frequent visitor to the Longchamp racecourse in the Bois de Boulogne, on the western edge of Paris, which remains open to visitors for horse racing today.
Though he relocated to Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands, Paul Gauguin was born in Paris’s 9th arrondissement and remained attached to the city, living there periodically and relying on Parisian dealers to sell his work. It’s possible to take a walking tour to see the exteriors of buildings associated with his life and work, including Atelier 11 at 11 Cité Falguière, one of the last surviving artists’ studios from that period. It was once home to Gauguin, as well as Amedeo Modigliani.
The Grand Palais on the Champs-Élysées, an opulent Beaux-Arts exhibition hall and museum in the 8th arrondissement recently reopened after a major renovation. After Gauguin’s death in 1903, his dreamlike still life Fleurs dans une coupe, offered in the November auction, was exhibited there.
Though Dutch-born, Vincent van Gogh lived and worked in Paris, often in Montmartre. He lived with his art-dealer brother Theo at 54 Rue Lepic; painted the Moulin de la Galette, which still stands today; and bought his paints at Père Tanguy’s art supply shop, at 14 Rue Clauzel. Van Gogh also painted Père Tanguy himself. (Today, a boutique has taken over the location, named Père Tanguy in homage to its previous resident.)
To experience the setting associated with Châtaignier en fleurs roses et blanches, you must venture about 45 minutes outside Paris to the commune of Auvers-sur-Oise. The evocative chestnut trees featured in the painting are located along what is now Avenue Charles de Gaulle, in the village center, a short stroll from Auberge Ravoux. Now a tourist attraction, the inn is where Van Gogh lodged in an attic room and where he died.
Having painted approximately 150 views of the City of Light, Camille Pissarro’s Paris is still very much visible today. You can make side-by-side comparisons with his paintings to see how much of the old city remains. He created a series of Impressionist masterpieces depicting Parisian landmarks and fin-de-siècle cityscapes that can still be visited today, including Boulevard Montmartre, Boulevard des Italiens, Gare Saint-Lazare, and the Jardin des Tuileries.
Pissarro often worked from elevated vantage points, looking out from hotel and apartment windows to capture sweeping views of elegant Haussmannian boulevards and grand city squares that retain their beauty today. One of the finest examples of this is Place du Théâtre-Français et l’avenue de l’Opéra, soleil d’après-midi en hiver, which Pissarro painted from the upper windows of the Grand Hôtel du Louvre. (A hotel with the same name exists, but it’s now a Hyatt property, located across the square.
Now known as Place André-Malraux, the scene looks remarkably similar today, with the Palais Garnier anchoring the streetscape. The avenue is still treeless, reflecting architect Charles Garnier’s desire to keep foliage from obstructing views of the opera house, while the classic Haussmannian architectural signatures—mansard roofs in zinc or slate and wrought-iron balconies—remain.
While Degas and his contemporaries were more interested in the human dramas of Paris, Claude Monet took the lead in landscape painting, including tableaus of the city’s serene, scenic gardens. Devotees can pay tribute with a visit to the Tuileries, which Monet painted in a series of works, often from an upper-floor apartment belonging to Victor Chocquet on Rue de Rivoli.
The largest of the four paintings in the series, Le Jardin des Tuileries (1876), is on sale at the Evening Auction. Other works from the series are housed at the Musée d’Orsay and the Musée Marmottan Monet, both in Paris and well worth visiting.
Of course, no Monet fan should miss the Musée de l’Orangerie, renowned for the artist’s Water Lilies. It’s also possible to take a day trip to Giverny to see the gardens that inspired some of his most celebrated works. For more of Monet’s landscapes hidden within the city, visit Parc Monceau in the 8th arrondissement, where he painted multiple views.
Painted in 1877, Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s En Canot (Jeune fille à la barque) perfectly exemplifies the French Impressionists’ ability to capture the douceur de vivre sweeping through Paris at the time. New rail networks were sending city dwellers into the countryside to enjoy riverside leisure resorts along the Seine, where boating, dining, and dancing became rituals of the emerging middle class.
For a similar scene to the one depicted in the painting, visit the Île des Impressionnistes in Chatou, about 20 minutes from central Paris. Other key attractions in Renoir’s Paris include the Musée de Montmartre and Renoir Gardens, a 17th-century complex that includes the Maison du Bel Air, the cottage studio once rented by Renoir, and the neighboring vineyard-adjacent Renoir Gardens, where he painted La Balançoire.
