Masterpieces Musée d’Orsay, Paris

In 1900 the Exposition Universelle drew thousands of art lovers to Paris, many arriving by train at the new Gare d’Orsay. Op­en­ed in 1986 and located on the Left Bank of the River Seine oppos­ite the Louvre, the building’s conversion into Musée d’Orsay was led by architects Bardon, Colboc and Phil­ippon. Now home to c100,000 works from 1848-1914, showcasing art by Berthe Morisot, Claude Monet, Cam­ille Pissarro, Alfred Sis­ley, Gustave Caillebotte etc.

Thank you to Sarah Belmont for her Musée d’Orsay material about my favourite works. Who were these masterpieces selected by: the curat­ors? the viewing public? the author?

Berthe Morisot, The Cradle, 1872, 

Musée d’Orsay. 

The Crad­le was an intimate depiction of Morisot’s sister Em­ma and Em­ma’s newborn baby, Blanche. At 31 Morisot (1841-95) her­self was still single, not marrying Eugène Manet until 1874 and becoming a mother herself only in 1879. The Cradle was shown at the first Impressionist Ex­hibition (1874) with little reaction, except that a few critics were sens­it­ive to its delicate palette. It did not sell until 1930, when the Louvre acquired it from the artist’s family.

Edouard Manet, Berthe Morisot with Bouquet of Vio­lets, 

1872 Musée d’Orsay.

 In late 1871 Manet (1832–83), who couldn’t paint while serving in the Franco-Prus­sian war and the Paris Commune, was able to resume working and reconnect with his former models. He’d met fellow artist Ber­the Morisot at the Louvre in 1868. Manet made a dozen portraits of Morisot, who married his younger brother and joined the Impressionist movement in 1874. This one shows her clad in trendy black in late C19th fash­ion, and holding a bou­quet of viol­ets. This was testimony to Man­et’s admiration for Spanish masters, especially Diego Velázquez.

Gustave Caillebotte, The Floor Scrapers (1875), 

Musée d'Orsay. 

Caillebotte (1848–94) drew from his academic training to depict an everyday scene of labourers at work. His approach to perspective may have been traditional and his subjects reminiscent of Greek st­at­ues, but the content of the painting did not please the jury of the 1875 Paris Salon, which considered it vulgar. However the 28-year-old artist presented the work at the second Impressionist Ex­hibition (1876). Critics then were less than welcoming. Emile Zola thought the painting was anti-artistic and so accurate that it made it bourgeois. It was first donated to the French State by Cail­leb­ot­te’s family in 1894, moved to the Louvre in 1929 and to Musée d’Orsay in 1986.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Dance at Moulin de la Gal­ette 1876 

 Musée d’Orsay

This is undoubtedly one of Renoir’s (1841–1919) most impor­t­ant works. The artist presented it at the 1877 Impressionist Exh­ibition. It was purchased 2 years later by Gustave Caillebotte who bequeathed it to the French State in 1894. Art critic Georges Rivière, who was seen in the painting said: “It’s a page of hist­ory, a precious monument to Parisian life painted with great ac­cur­acy.” Even if Renoir included some of his painter friends in the compos­it­ion, his goal was to capture not a scene of his private life but the atmosphere of the actual Moulin de la Galette in the Mont­martre district. Three areas are depicted: the seated char­ac­t­ers in the foreground having a conversation, the crowd behind them danc­ing, and the band performing in an enclosure at the back. The blur­ry effect created by this layering was not to every­one’s taste then but today it would be hard to deny the modernity of the piece.

Paul Cézanne, The Card Players 1890–5, 

Musée d’Orsay. 

In the 1890s, Cézanne (1839–1906) tackled the subject of card players, which he may have borrowed from Caravaggio and from the Le Nain brothers. Of the 5 versions of The Card Players Céz­anne painted, what strikes one first in this one is the symmet­rical posing of his models, pea­s­ants whom the painter would see at the Jas de Bouffan, his fath­er’s property near Aix-en-Provence. The bot­tle on the table marks the centre of the composition and accent­uates the silent face-off between the two opponents.

I have excluded the Monet, Rodin, Degas, van Gogh, Sérusier, Gauzi, Burne-Jones, Gauguin, Redon, Claudel, Derain and Rousseau. Now I would like you readers to read the original article, What to See at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, and share with me views about which masterpieces you love and which you are less keen on, if any.

Read 25 Masterpieces at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris by Sarah Belmont, July 8 2024 Musée d’Orsay, Paris