‘The Morozov Collection’ at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, is a companion exhibition to ‘The Shchukin Collection’ which was shown there in 2016. The brothers Mikhail and Ivan Morozov, like Sergei Shchukin, put together a vast collection of modern art from renowned French artists including Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Cezanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Bonnard, Denis, Matisse, Derain and Picasso and these are displayed alongside works by Russian artists from the same period including Repin, Serov, Goncharova, Larionov, Malevich and Konchalovsky. The exhibition contains around two hundred masterpieces from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries lent by museums in Moscow and Saint Petersburg.

Valentin Serov ‘Portrait of Ivan Abramovich Morozov’ (1910)

Auguste Renoir ‘Portrait of the Actress Jeanne Samary’ (1877)

Paul Gauguin ‘Café at Arles’ (1888)

Paul Gauguin Eu haere ia oe (Woman Holding a Fruit) Where Are You Going? (1893)

Vincent van Gogh ‘The Prison Courtyard’ (1890)

Paul Cézanne ‘Smoker’ (1891 – 92)

Paul Cézanne ‘Still Life with a Curtain’ (1892 – 94)

Paul Cézanne ‘Bathers’ (1892 – 94)

Edvard Munch ‘White Night. Aasgardstrand’ (‘Girls on the Bridge’) (1903)

Pablo Picasso ‘Young Acrobat on a Ball’ (1905)

André Derain ‘Drying the Sails, Collioure’ (1905)

Maurice Denis ‘The Story of Psyche’, panel five: ‘In the Presence of the Gods Jupiter Bestows Immortality on Psyche and Celebrates Her Marriage to Eros’ (1908)

Henri Matisse ‘Fruit and Bronze’ (1910)

Valentin Serov ‘Portrait of Margarita Kirillovna Morozova’ (1910)

Sandro Botticelli is rightly considered to be one of the greatest artists of the Italian Renaissance. The exhibition at the Musée Jacquemart-André celebrates the creative genius who developed a personal style that brought him enormous success in Florence at the end of the fifteenth century.

After initially training in a goldsmith’s shop, Botticelli entered the studio of Filippo Lippi where he learned the techniques of easel and fresco painting. Around 1467 he set up his own studio where he developed his own characteristic style which would attract the attention of the Medici family who favoured him with commissions. He also painted portraits on the walls of the Sistine Chapel and provided drawings for the first illustrated edition of Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’.

Sandro Botticelli ‘Giuliano de’ Medici’ (c.1478 – 80)

Sandro Botticelli ‘Virgin and Child’ (‘Madonna of the Book’) (c.1482 – 83)

Sandro Botticelli ‘Simonetta Vespucci as a Nymph'(c.1485)

Sandro Botticelli ‘Venus pudica’ (c.1485 – 90)

Sandro Botticelli ‘Crucifix’ (c.1490 – 95)

Sandro Botticelli ‘Michele Marullo Tarchaniota’ (1490 – 1500)

Sandro Botticelli ‘Madonna del Magnificat’ (1490s)

Sandro Botticelli and workshop ‘Virgin and Child and young John the Baptist’ (c.1505)

A fascinating exhibition at the Musée de l’Orangerie of around fifty paintings by the Russian-born artist Chaïm Soutine, who worked in Paris from 1913 until his tragic death in 1943, and the Dutch-born American Abstract Impressionist, Willem de Kooning.

De Kooning was heavily influence by Soutine after seeing his paintings in the Museum of Modern Art’s 1950 retrospective. The Orangerie exhibition highlights the association between the two artists, showing the influence of Soutine, especially on De Kooning’s ‘Woman’ paintings.

Chaïm Soutine ‘The Hill at Céret’ (1921)

Willem de Kooning ‘Amityville’ (1971)

Chaïm Soutine ‘Portrait of Madeleine Castaing’ (1929)

Willem de Kooning ‘Woman V’ (1953)

Chaïm Soutine ‘La Communiante’ (1924)

Willem de Kooning ‘Woman II’ (1952)

Chaïm Soutine ‘Le Garçon d’étage’ (1927)

Chaïm Soutine ‘Enfant de choeur’ (1927 – 28)

Chaïm Soutine ‘Le petit Pâtissier’ (1922 – 23)

Willem de Kooning ‘Woman’ (1953)

Ilya Repin was one of the most-renowned Russian artists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The exhibition at the Petit Palais in Paris was a major retrospective covering his whole career from paintings completed during his studies at the Saint Petersburg Academy, works displayed as part of the Peredvizhniki group and his portraits of himself, his family and major Russian composers and writers.

Ilya Repin ‘Preparation for the Examination’ (1864)

Ilya Repin ‘Barge Haulers on the Volga’ (1870 – 73)

Ilya Repin ‘Religious Procession in the Province of Koursk’ (1881 – 83)

Ilya Repin ‘Sadko in the Underwater Kingdom’ (1876)

Ilya Repin ‘Self-Portrait’ (1887)

Ilya Repin ‘Portrait of Yuri Repin’ (1882)

Ilya Repin ‘Portrait of Nadia Repin’ (1881)

Ilya Repin ‘Modest Mussorgsky’ (1881)

Ilya Repin ‘Leo Tolstoy’ (1887)

An excellent concert at Maison de la Radio France began with an extremely well-played rendition of Stravinsky’s short classical composition ‘Septet’, with strings, woodwinds and piano all performing superbly. Next was, for me, the highlight of the evening, Karen Gomyo as soloist in Shostakovich’s ‘Concerto for Violin and Orchestra no. 1’. It was an intensive, whirlwind performance that was also sensitive and technically brilliant that deservedly brought endless applause and an encore.

The second half was no less exciting as the Radio France Philharmonique under Mikko Franck performed a magnificent ‘Sacre du Printemps’, with the strings, winds and percussion all on top form. It was a memorable evening.

Karen Gomyo with Mikko Franck and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France

Stravinsky: ‘Septuor’; Shostakovich ‘Concerto for Violin and Orchestra no. 1; Stravinsky ‘Le Sacre du Printemps’ (‘The Rite of Spring’)

The School of Paris was not a school at all but the name subsequently given to the artists, many of whom were Jewish, who mostly came from Eastern Europe and the Russian Empire, arriving in Paris between 1904 and 1914. They included Marc Chagall, Amedeo Modigliani, Chaim Soutine, Jules Pascin, Sonia Delaunay, Jacques Lipchitz, Moïse Kisling and Ossip Zadkine.

The exhibition at the Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme in the Marias district of Paris is devoted to these artists and their participation in the artistic scene in what was then the capital of modern art.

Sonia Delaunay ‘Philomène’ (1907)

Jules Pascin ‘Portrait of Hermine David’ (1908)

Marc Chagall ‘Le Père’ (1911)

Sonia Delaunay ‘Prismes électriques, no. 41’ (1913 – 14)

Amedeo Modigliani ‘Portrait of Dédie’ (1918)

Chaïm Soutine ‘Garçon d’honneur’ (1924)

Chaïm Soutine ‘Young English Girl’ (1934)