"Art Date with Monet's Water Lilies" (oil on stretched canvas; 9" x 12") sold

sold

Paris is a city of museums.  During my short visit while back, I have checked out several and wished I could have stayed longer to visit more museums.  The Musee de l'Orangerie is an art gallery of impressionist and post-impressionist paintings located in the west corner of the Tuileries Gardens in Paris.  The museum is most famous for being the permanent home for eight Water Lilies murals (Les Nympheas) by Claude Monet, which wrap around a white oval room.  A perfect setting for a romantic art date!

By the way, "Art Date" is an infinity painting.  It keeps going!

From the left

From the right

"Fountain at the National Gallery of Art" (oil on linen; 9" x 12") sold

sold

Monday last week was my daughter's 15th birthday.  She wanted to do some water sports like kayaking or white water rafting to celebrate it.  But her dad was swamped with work.  So, instead, she suggested that she and I should go to look at Renaissance paintings at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.  What?  This is the girl who used to be bored to death with the world-famous art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City a few years ago?  I was glad to oblige her request.

Outside the world-class museum on The Mall, which is also free for all to enjoy, I saw a marble fountain transformed into an enchanted fountain by dappled light.  If I hadn't told you where I found it, you could have easily believed it was somewhere in Europe! My daughter and I had a wonderful afternoon together that day.  I also got a beautiful painting out of our date.

"Smithsonian Castle Rose Garden" (oil on canvas; 18" x 18")

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Reference photo

One spring day, I went to The Mall with my family and saw the rose garden at the eastern end of the Smithsonian Castle.  The air was so thick with the rose perfume that you couldn't have missed it while walking by.  I didn't, however, stop to take pictures because I had company.  So I went back a couple of days later, hoping that the heavy rain the day before didn't damage the flowers in full bloom.  I timed it carefully so that the garden would be basking in morning sun as you can see above.

So far, so good.  Painting the scene was not as easy.  It was tough to make the various components of the picture--the castle with a complicated mock medieval architecture, two big trees, garden, benches, etc--work together harmoniously without drawing too much attention to the castle.  I finally finished "Smithsonian Castle Rose Garden" yesterday.  I am going to enter it in The Art League's annual landscape show in two weeks.  We'll see how it goes.