Tag: photogrpahy

Paris 4, January 2026

Our final day in this lovely part of a lovely city (sad face). The rain we experienced yesterday morning had blown over and though it was cloudy and more was forecast, we entered the day with hope for a walk before heading to Gare du Nord for the train back to London and on to St Leonards.

After breakfasting in the hotel, packing up and farewelling our small but perfectly formed room we headed out the door for our final stroll up and down the hill that is Montmartre. There are so many different options to take, narrow cobbled streets and steep steps are everywhere, there is almost no need to repeat a previous walk. I just love a steep narrow cobbled street, or any combination of two of those things, especially when nestled in between tall houses that have seen a lot more history than I have.

Our main objective today was to visit the Musée de Montmartre. On the second floor is a recreation of the studio and home of the artist Suzanne Valadon, who lived in the building with her husband and son from 1912.

Valadon was well known in Montmartre, as a model (for Renoir among others), a muse, a lover and eventually as the great artist she was.

We didn’t know too much about her life or art until I read a Substack essay just before we came here. After a tough childhood in the late 1890s, from early life in rural France to desperate poverty in Paris, she lived an amazing and full life. Starting as an acrobat and street performer and then artist’s model when Montmartre was almost the centre of the artistic world, with so many (today anyway) well known artists living in this small enclave. Artists like Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec (who named her Suzanne), Van Gough, Degas, Utrillo (her husband) and Picasso all lived in the area at the same time.

We were interested to see some of her work.

We arrived at the museum a little early and were bemused at the couple of people waiting outside to go in, especially after the size of the queue at the LVF On Monday which had hundreds of people. I preferred this one to be fair.

The museum was OK, there wasn’t a lot to see that particularly interested me until we got to the Valadon rooms. These few small rooms have been designed to represent what life was like for her one hundred or so years ago.

Her paintings adorn some of the walls in this tiny apartment.

The studio was fabulous, with wonderful light and deep shadows. I love looking at how creative people work(ed), it’s slightly less interesting now, with so much work done on computers; often with ginormous monitors. Perhaps I should recreate a classic ‘creative’ space and that would inspire me to be a better writer, photographer or something else. Maybe not, I’m not so big on clutter.

Then, merde!

It was time to collect our bags and walk back down the hill of Montmartre to get the metro to Gare du Nord, the Eurostar to St Pancras, the Northern Line Tube to London Bridge and the train back to St Leonards and home.

I LOVED Montmartre 🙂