Paris 7th arrondissement, in the afternoon series — 7 Paintings by Arnaud Quercy

The afternoon series of 72 Facets of Paris — the waltz at its full, warm turning. These seven facets fall in the early afternoon, between one and three o'clock, when the dance is no longer rising but holding its height: three-time still strong, sunlit and unhurried. They cover the faubourg Saint-Germain in the 7th arrondissement, the ministerial and residential Left Bank — official quarter and market-village at once, the city neither waking nor tiring but simply, fully alive in the middle of its day.

Their harmonies are the bright, settled chords of the afternoon. Three facets rest on the dominant seventh C7, a sonority with forward pull and heat; three more lean on the minor seventh G−7, cooler and more pensive; and one opens the series on the major seventh FMaj7, the warmest and most luminous of the three families. Translated through the artist's ideamorphic method, these chords return colour to the canvases in full: ochre and olive, red and magenta, gold and tan, set against returning blue, grey, lavender and the occasional black block — the palette of a quarter caught in clear afternoon light, neither shadowed nor glaring.

The seven places trace a slow circuit of the faubourg. The boulevard Saint-Germain opens at one, near the Assemblée, drawing from FMaj7 the spirit of the official quarter at midday — blue returning beside ochre and olive, red and grey. At twenty past one the market-village of rue Cler answers on G−7: white and grey, red-orange and ochre, magenta and a purple edge, the lunch crowd on the pedestrian street. At twenty to two the market itself turns to C7 — red and purple, ochre and blue, a magenta arc and a black block among the stalls. At two, rue Saint-Dominique quiets on G−7, grey and gold with a purple block and a white square; twenty minutes on, a bakery-café there takes up C7, a black block over red, a purple column and olive, lavender and white. At twenty to three the quiet rue de Grenelle returns to G−7 — ochre and purple, a black block and orange, grey and pink, the residential hush of the 7th — and at three a café on rue du Bac, by the Carré Rive Gauche, closes the series on C7: grey and purple, olive and orange, lavender over brown.

Seen together, the seven compose a warm, even field — the cycle's afternoon ground, where colour has fully returned and form sits easy in the light, ministry and market held in the same clear hour. Each is one measure of the waltz and one square of the larger mosaic, which fully assembled forms an abstract portrait of Paris. Like the whole cycle of seventy-two, these seven facets were commissioned together and now belong to a single Paris collection.