Trivia
The conversion of the Celesteville's obsolete train station into a museum of art in the story is inspired by the conversion of Gare d'Orsay (Paris, France) to the now famous Musée d'Orsay. The design of the station in the story bears striking resemblance to the actual Gare d'Orsay, including the large clock at the facade of the station.
In real life, the cause of obsolescence of Gare d'Orsay was its platforms became too short as longer trains came into service. Gare d'Orsay had been built in 1900 to serve as terminus for the Chemin de Fer de Paris à Orléans (Paris-Orléans Railway). It ceased to cater to long-distance rail traffic in 1939 and served only suburban rail services.
The decision to convert it to a museum was announced in 1977. Listed as a historical monument in 1978, it re-opened as Musée d'Orsay in 1986.
A number of artworks featured in the story were inspired by actual artworks found in Musée d'Orsay.
Berthe Marie Pauline Morisot was a French painter and a member of the circle of painters in Paris who became known as the Impressionists.
Édouard Manet was a French modernist painter. He was one of the first 19th-century artists to paint modern life, as well as a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism.
Jean Frédéric Bazille was a French Impressionist painter. Many of Bazille's major works are examples of figure painting in which he placed the subject figure within a landscape painted en plein air.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to Watteau."
The Musée d'Orsay is a museum in Paris, France, on the Left Bank of the Seine. It is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, a Beaux-Arts railway station built between 1898 and 1900. The museum holds mainly French art dating from 1848 to 1914, including paintings, sculptures, furniture, and photography. It houses the largest collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist masterpieces in the world, by painters including Berthe Morisot, Claude Monet, Édouard Manet, Degas, Renoir, Cézanne, Seurat, Sisley, Gauguin, and van Gogh. Many of these works were held at the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume prior to the museum's opening in 1986. It is one of the largest art museums in Europe.
Henri Fantin-Latour was a French painter and lithographer best known for his flower paintings and group portraits of Parisian artists and writers.
Babar the Elephant is an elephant character who first appeared in 1931 in the French children's book Histoire de Babar by Jean de Brunhoff.
Alexandre Cabanel was a French painter. He painted historical, classical and religious subjects in the academic style. He was also well known as a portrait painter. According to Diccionario Enciclopedico Salvat, Cabanel is the best representative of L'art pompier, and was Napoleon III's preferred painter.
The Gare Saint-Lazare, officially Paris-Saint-Lazare, is one of the six large mainline railway station termini in Paris, France. It serves train services toward Normandy, northwest of Paris, along the Paris–Le Havre railway. Saint-Lazare is the third busiest station in France, after the Gare du Nord and Gare de Lyon. It handles 290,000 passengers each day. The station was designed by architect Juste Lisch; the maître d'œuvre was Eugène Flachat.
Events from the year 1868 in art.
Laurent de Brunhoff is a French author and illustrator, known primarily for continuing the Babar the Elephant series of children's books that was created by his father, Jean de Brunhoff.
Victorine-Louise Meurent was a French painter and a model for painters. Although she is best known as the favorite model of Édouard Manet, she was an artist in her own right who regularly exhibited at the prestigious Paris Salon. In 1876, her paintings were selected for inclusion at the Salon's juried exhibition, when Manet's work was not.
The Railway, widely known as Gare Saint-Lazare, is an 1873 painting by Édouard Manet. It is the last painting by Manet of his favourite model, the fellow painter Victorine Meurent, who was also the model for his earlier works Olympia and the Luncheon on the Grass. It was exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1874, and donated to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. in 1956.
The Balcony is an 1868-69 oil painting by the French painter Édouard Manet. It depicts four figures on a balcony, one of whom is sitting: the painter Berthe Morisot, who married Manet's brother Eugène in 1874. In the centre is the painter Jean Baptiste Antoine Guillemet. On the right is Fanny Claus, a violinist. The fourth figure, partially obscured in the interior's background, is possibly Léon Leenhoff, Manet's son. It was exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1869, and then kept by Manet until his death in 1883. It was sold to the painter Gustave Caillebotte in 1884, who left it to the French state in 1894. It is currently held at the Musée d'Orsay, in Paris.
Suzanne Manet was a Dutch-born pianist and the wife of the painter Édouard Manet, for whom she frequently modeled.
Berthe Morisot with a Bouquet of Violets is an 1872 oil painting by Édouard Manet. It depicts fellow painter Berthe Morisot dressed in black mourning dress, with a barely visible bouquet of violets. The painting, sometimes known as Portrait of Berthe Morisot, Berthe Morisot in a black hat or Young woman in a black hat, is in the collection of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Manet also created an etching and two lithographs of the same composition.
Sam Salz was an art dealer, art collector, and patron of the arts. He was born March 12, 1894 in Radomyśl Wielki,. He died on March 21, 1981, in New York City.
The Thread of Art is a graphic novel created by Serbian artist Gradimir Smudja and his daughter Ivana Smudja. The novel was originally published in French in two volumes, in 2012 and 2015.
Laure was an art model in France known for her work with artist Édouard Manet. She is best known for posing as the black maid offering the white nude figure a bouquet of flowers in Manet's 1863 painting Olympia.
