We Love the Louvre

Shefler: “Today we went to the Louvre and we focused on looking at paintings today. After having a delicious beef tartar for lunch I went and looked at paintings.

“The artist, Eustache Le Sueur, lived in Paris all of his life and is known for his part in the French academy for painting. A lot of his works have been engraved and are on tapestry.

“I liked this painting so much because it shows just an everyday seen of a group of friends hanging out on a bed. All of the guys seem very different one of them is a musician, another is an artist a third is very brave and some sort of soldier. This reminds me of hanging out with my friends back home and chilling in one of our rooms just hanging out. Another reason why I like this painting is because they seem like they are waiting for something to happen and that’s a lot like me. I’m constantly waiting for something to happen. I hope you can understand why I like this painting and I think you should go and see it.”

Rainier: “Today was my first day at the Louvre. I just went to the French paintings section. My favorite was Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix. It is a painting of Liberty, who is a woman representing the people of France. She is leading the people of France to battle the French army. They are very ragtag and stripping the clothes off the dead French soldiers to get something to wear. They show this by having a ton of dead French soldiers at the front that are missing shoes and other clothes.

In the background you can see some French soldiers all lining up for battle and behind them a modern city. In the bottom left corner there is a man picking up a stone and looking very angry. It will probably end up in a French soldier’s face. In the back there is a French flag that looks like it is made of clothing. I like it because of its style. It is realistic. I also like the dark shade to it. Another thing I like about this style is the highlighting of a person or part of the painting. In this case it is Liberty. What I mean is as soon as you look at the painting your eyes are drawn to it. The artist does something to the painting that just makes you get drawn to it. This is Delacroix’s most famous painting. As you can see, I really like it.”

Nelson: “Today we went to the Louvre. My favorite painting was The Capture of Constantinople by the Crusaders by Eugène Delacroix. I like how all of it is dramatic. People are dead, priests are begging, there are gold chests of tattered cloth, and smoke everywhere. It has very lavish brushwork and the texture is fine and it is a very nice painting.”

Libbey: “I saw a painting of a king riding a horse and his saddle was made out of tiger skin and smoke in the background. It was guns. There was more smoke it was Mount Vesuvius.”

Rowena: “One is wearing a red dress and one is wearing a blue dress. Who is that lady lying down?”