Adding a little time travel to our trip

If I can get my act together, I accompany a trip abroad with a novel that's set in the place. Often it doesn't work out, but this time, on our trip to Paris, it did.
I read Edmund de Waal's 'The hare with amber eyes', the story of the rise and fall of the author's wealthy Jewish forbears, told via the vehicle of their collection of netsuke (tiny Japanese carvings). Charles Ephrussi was a connoisseur and art collector in the second half of the nineteenth century. The book includes a painting by Caillebotte which captured the atmosphere of the place where Charles lived, so when I spotted a Caillebotte exhibition at the Musee D'Orsay I was eager to go.
The lifestyle it portrayed was of wealthy men who had taken the decision to remain bachelors, not because they were gay (although some may have been), but out of a wish to remain unencumbered by domestic concerns and to pursue love affairs while avoiding responsibilities. The time allowed by such a lifestyle was spent by Caillebotte in painting and by Ephrussi in studying art.
They lived in the same neighbourhood - De Waal wrote about it and Caillebotte painted it.
The result was that for one glorious morning in the Musee d'Orsay I felt I could almost reach out and touch late 19th century Paris.