Paris 2nd arrondissement, in the dead of night series — 6 Paintings by Arnaud Quercy

The second series of 72 Facets of Paris, and the first to step into the dance. These six facets close the prelude and open the waltz proper: here, deep in the dead of night between twenty past two and four in the morning, the music first finds its hushed three-time, the bar settling under a city still asleep. They cover the 2nd arrondissement — the smallest and most enclosed of all, a knot of narrow streets, shuttered fronts and old quarters drawn tight around a single basilica — caught at the hour when nothing moves and the day has not yet begun to declare itself.

Their harmonies sit between the gravity of the prelude and the colour of the waking city. One facet lingers on the half-diminished chord (A♭−7♭5), the same suspended tension that ruled the opening series; the five others rise into the dominant ninths (B♭−9, E♭−9), fuller and more restless chords that already lean toward movement. Translated through the artist's ideamorphic method, this is where the palette first warms: the near-black fields of the prelude give way to mauve and navy, to magenta, coral and orange, broken by small disciplined squares of grey, white and pure black — colour beginning to gather, still held under the lid of the night.

The six places trace a tight nocturnal loop through the heart of the arrondissement. At twenty past two the basilica of Notre-Dame-des-Victoires, seen from the place des Petits-Pères, holds its A♭−7♭5 as a near-black field broken by a coral block, a grey square and a pale half-moon disc — a single ex-voto glow in the dark. Twenty minutes on, an old residential block on rue de la Banque answers in E♭−9, soft mauve and blue edged with magenta and a sliver of olive, its windows shuttered. At three, rue Montmartre flares in B♭−9 — vivid reds and orange against magenta and a square of pure black, the empty street still warm; then the narrow rue Tiquetonne at twenty past three returns to E♭−9, magenta and lavender under a split grey-green moon and a violet diamond. Toward four, rue Dussoubs on the edge of the Sentier sounds B♭−9 in deep navy, orange, magenta and olive with a small white square — the garment quarter asleep — before rue des Petits-Carreaux closes the series at four o'clock in E♭−9, teal and magenta over olive and shadow, a white square holding the dark, just before the market stirs.

Seen together, the six compose a field still dark but no longer airless — mauves, navies and warm reds gathering where the prelude held only black, the colour of the city beginning to breathe before dawn. It is the moment the waltz first turns: harmony loosening into movement, the smallest arrondissement keeping its quiet while the cycle prepares to climb hour by hour toward the light. Like the full cycle of seventy-two, these six facets were commissioned together and now belong to a single Paris collection.