A Souvenir of Paris

The First of August...how did that happen?

I guess I haven't been paying attention, for now the calendar is already flipping to August.

A friend is in Paris today for her birthday and we wish her a great celebration.

Thinking of Paris offers me a chance to post a rogue Jurney painting. It's wee (ca. 6"x8", 15x20cm). 

I know it's of a gallery in the Louvre, but I don't remember when I painted it (or why). One can still see some pencil lines that were possibly an attempt to straighten out cockeyed paintings.

 
Below is a study that I'm working on (16" x 6 5/8", 40 x 17.5 cm). The outside scene is not complete--- the building will likely have a window and a door based on this section of a 1994 French drawing.

 
I'm most concerned at this point with getting the inside/outside difference correct, and with figuring out just the right amount of contrast and haziness to tell the story of a bright, sun-filled day.

Much time was spent on the tile floor. Ultimately I resorted to a book on perspective. The correct method turned out to be both dry and mechanical, but I managed to start softening its starchiness before I left the studio today. Do forgive, please, all the wavering lines of the doorways. It's just a plaything.

There's something about the light in this sketch at the moment which is, to me at least, quite evocative of the Macchiaioli. 
My sketch is certainly as tall and skinny as many Macchiaioli paintings are short and horizontal. But I think it's a hint of Italian warmth that's doing it.

Doesn't it seem strange that a nondescript doorway, looking out onto a drawing made in Normandy almost twenty years ago, should combine in my mind to suggest Italy? 

Cheers.