09 February 2011

Plusieurs choses ce matin

First, a follow-up to the post about the drawing by CHM's grandfather. CHM says he's pretty sure that the little étude he gave me represents the page (le page, masculine) in the painting called La Remise de l'Etendard that hangs at the château in Blois.

CHM sent me a scan (or photo) of another study of the page boy. Here it is:

CHM has recently donated this piece to the museum in the city of Péronne, north of Paris.

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We not only have cyclamens — I looked up the word and most, but not all, dictionaries seem to say the plural of cyclemen is cyclamens — in our yard, but also a lot of primroses (primevères in French). I took pictures of some of them day before yesterday, and here they are:

The pictures aren't great — they are un peu floues, not very sharp — and that's why I didn't post them earlier. The primroses are just starting to come up, and there will be a lot more of them out in the yard over the next few weeks.


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I went and got my hair cut yesterday. The woman who runs the hair salon, le salon de coiffure, in our village is named Madame Barbier. It's not a joke. She is married to Monsieur Barbier. Her name is just a funny coincidence, given her métier.

Now there's another one. At our neighbors' little party a week ago, the discussion turned to firewood. We said we have had trouble finding people who sell firewood and will deliver it to the house. A neighbor told us that she knows two people we can call.

One of them is Monsieur Dubois. In other words, « l'homme qui vend du bois » — the man who sells wood — well, you get it. The next time we need firewood, we'll call Monsieur Dubois. He lives in the village of Orbigny, just a few miles south of us, and we probably won't forget his name.

Another person with a funny name here is Monsieur Danger, who owns and operates the Peugeot dealership in Saint-Aignan. It's called the Garage Danger, and it's where I bought my car 7½ years ago.

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I had one other topic but I'll save it for tomorrow.

15 comments:

  1. haaa haaaaaaaa :)) Those are good coincidences, I must say :)

    I can't believe that we could be heading for springtime soon... it's just COLD COLD COLD here. Cold.

    I think it's uber cool to have an authentic study from a section of a painting that is hanging in the château in Blois!

    Judy

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  2. My swim coach in high school was Mr Gill...just sayin' :)

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  3. The young boy who posed for the study I gave Ken and Walt was probably Italian. An Italian art historian told me that at the end of the 19th century models were mostly Italian because they were cheaper.

    Last July I gave the museum a notebook full of model names. They were mostly Italian names. After each man's, woman's and child's name my grand-father noted the model's characteristics: aquiline nose, nice beard, blond hair, blue eyes and so on.

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  4. there was a gynocologish here in richmond named Dr Conquest!

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  5. Love the primroses! I plant the different colored ones in my garden and they all become red with a yellow outer rim. But I still love them. And the wild cyclamens are wonderful. I hope yours have that great fragrance.

    For names, I am seeing a Dr. Payne and one of my friends sees Dr. Grim.

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  6. Walt had a dentist named Dr. Hack in California. Our former dentist in Saint-Aignan, now retired, was Christian Bigot. Not the same deal, but funny in English, normal in French.

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  7. The primroses are beautiful. For me in the southwest its surprising to see them just come up in the wild. Like the cyclamens they are quite expensive in the nurseries here, and they will only be annuals.

    The sketch certainly looks like the study for the page. My 2 cents on croppping vs. non cropping: I would take the paper down just enough so that the drawing is centered. It is a beautiful drawing.

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  8. My landlady in Paris in the 70s was Mme Bavard. I remember thinking at the time "qu'elle portait bien son nom."

    A friend had knee surgery a few years ago; the surgeon's name -- Dr. Sledge.

    And just for funny. My wife grew up in North Haven, Connecticut. Her family knew the Ginsburgs who named their daughter Pocahontas. Another family they knew were the Tomshitskys.

    You can't make this up.

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  9. One of our neighbors down the road is Monsieur Pinard. Don't know much about his tastes in wine.

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  10. Diogenes, I don't plan to crop the paper the drawing is on myself. I will take it to a framer to have it done.

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  11. When I bought my little Yorkshire cottage, the man who inspected it for woodworm was called Mr Grub.

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  12. Ken, from your days living in San Francisco, did you know of a dentist here who's name is Les Plack? Thought I'd add that to your "named appropriately" list!

    Donna in SF

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  13. I once worked with a man whose last name was Bonebrake. His father was an Orthopedic Surgeon! Which came first, I always wondered. The recognition of what his last name meant or his desire to become a bone surgeon?

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  14. I love strange, yet appropriate, names.

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  15. Thanks for all those good names.

    Donna, I never came across the dentist named Les Plack when I was in the Bay Area. And I thought Dr. Hack was a funny name for a dentist.

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