Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
prison was torn down and its stones used to build the bridge
at the Place de la Concorde. The people could then walk
across the Seine, on this symbol of oppression, and up the
steps of their Assemblée Nationale, one of two representative
legislative bodies that still today sets laws according to the
will of the people.
The symbol of this new France became the young, bare-
chested peasant woman, fondly called Marianne, holding the
tricolour l ag. (It deserves future discussion that Marianne
today is the face, but not the bare breasts, of movie stars
such as Catherine Deneuve.)
By the second half of the 19th century, three schools
l ourished: the romantic painters such as Delacroix and
Gericault; the realists, Ingres and Courbet and the symbolist,
Corot, precursor of France's greatest contribution to the arts.
The next generation, Monet and Renoir, led this new artistic
force called Impressionism. Art historians now credit the
sunlit ripples of the painting
The Seine at La Grenouillère
as
the i rst Impressionist painting, done in 1869.
Everyone in France is an artist... or wants to be.
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