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La Rochelle II, French Landscape Painting

4/18/2012 12:40:14 AM

  If anyone wants to paint or learn to draw elegant boats, I'd say, go to La Rochelle.  Signs of heritage and tradition as an important seaside town in the French maritime history are everywhere.  Especially if you approach La Rochelle by boat, you will understand it immediately as you are welcomed by massive medieval towers that were built to protect the town from enemies coming from the sea.  Then you see hundreds of boats and yachts in their ports behind the fortified walls, and beautiful houses of shipbuilders and merchants in their historic old center.  A jewel of all towns dotted along the Bay of Biscay, La Rochelle is [...]

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La Rochelle I, French Landscape Painting

4/15/2012 12:54:34 AM

  La Rochelle must be one of the lovelist and the most inviting cities in western France.  During its 1,000-year history it emerged from a fisherman's village to an important seasport town on the Atlantic Coast.  Walking around the town is such a delight as many seventeenth- or eighteenth-century buildings inside the historic center have been well-preserved.  Arcades, old shipowners' mansions, half-timbered houses, Gothic-style architecture... at every turn, there's something to appreciate and marvel at.  Colors of many buildings are almost white or come with light pastel hues.  And they glow in the light that is much softer and a bit cooler compared to what one typically sees in [...]

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La Seine, Paris V, French Landscape Painting

4/9/2012 8:30:32 AM

  Cities like Paris seem to have such charm that they make you dream of things both ordinary and extraordinary.  For instance, thinking of Paris makes me dream of strolling down a street with a baguette in hand or living on a luxurious houseboat on the Seine.   In Paris I always enjoy walking along the river banks to see all the boats, especially the ones with their owners living inside.  What a life it must be to wake up to a view of the Eiffel Tower and be able to take your house out to sea!     La Seine, Paris V   Click here for an enlarged [...]

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Springtime in Paris, Paris Café Painting

4/5/2012 12:30:50 AM

  "With so many trees in the city, you could see the spring coming each day until a night of warm wind would bring it suddenly in one morning...   Sometimes the heavy cold rains would beat it back so that it would seem that it would never come and that you were losing a season out of your life.  This was the only truly sad time in Paris because it was unnatural...   You expected to be sad in the fall.  Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare [...]

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