Paris 4th arrondissement, the city awakens series — 6 Paintings by Arnaud Quercy

The fourth series of 72 Facets of Paris turns to the southern Marais at daybreak. These six facets fall between twenty past six and eight in the morning, the hour when the city shakes itself awake — shutters lifting, the first coffees poured, shops opening one by one onto the old narrow streets. The introduction's free, mysterious breath is long behind: the waltz is now in full three-time, and the dance gathers pace through the morning, carrying the painter through a quarter where royal stone and humble lane stand side by side in the early light.

Four harmonic families colour the series. The dominant sevenths B♭7 and G♭7 give the brighter, opening sonorities; the lush major-ninth D♭maj9 underlies the grand façades; and the minor sevenths E♭−7 and F−7 carry the older, quieter lanes. Translated through the artist's ideamorphic method, these morning harmonies rise from grey and black toward green and yellow, blue and teal, lavender and red-orange — the muted ground of cut stone repeatedly broken by a warm upright, a coloured square, a half-disc, as if daylight were testing the dark surfaces and finding its first footholds.

The six places trace the waking quarter. At twenty past six the shops of rue Saint-Antoine open on G♭7 — green and yellow, grey and a teal square, lavender, the shutters beginning to rise; twenty minutes on, the long façades of rue de Rivoli answer in D♭maj9, grey and black opened by a red-orange upright and a white and a blue square, morning under the arches. At seven a café on rue Vieille-du-Temple returns to G♭7 — a grey arc, navy and olive, blue and a white square against black, the first coffees. At twenty past seven the haussmannian front of 17 boulevard Henri IV stands again on D♭maj9, grey and teal arcs and blocks of blue and red-orange. At twenty to eight rue des Rosiers opens on F−7 and B♭7, blue and tan, lavender and orange, a violet-and-teal half-disc on the old narrow street; and at eight the dance gathers pace down the humble rue des Barres behind Saint-Gervais on E♭−7 — a blue disc beside magenta and lavender, a pale upright on grey, an old lane caught in early light.

Seen together, the six compose a field of waking Paris: a stone-grey morning ground from which colour steadily lifts, square by square and arc by arc, the brightening green-and-yellow of the dominant sevenths and the cool blue of the minor lanes settling into one even daylight. Each holds its place in the third and fourth columns of the larger grid, fragments of the mosaic that, fully assembled, forms an abstract portrait of Paris. Like the full cycle of seventy-two, these six facets were commissioned together and now belong to a single Paris collection.