Paris Attraction the Museum of Orsay - Musee d’Orsay | Paris Travel Guide - Hotel Reservations

Inside View the Museum of Orsay

The Musee d’Orsay is a museum in Paris, France, on the left bank of the Seine, housed in the former railway station, the Gare d’Orsay, an impressive Beaux-Arts edifice built between 1898 and 1900. It holds mainly French art dating from 1848 to 1915, including paintings, sculptures, furniture, and photography, and is probably best known for its extensive collection of impressionist and post-impressionist masterpieces (the largest in the world) by such painters such as Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Cezanne, Seurat, Gauguin and Van Gogh. Many of these works were held at the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume prior to the museum’s opening in 1986.

History

The museum building was originally a railway station, Gare d’Orsay, constructed for the Chemin de Fer de Paris à Orleans and finished in time for the 1900 Exposition Universelle to the design of three architects: Lucien Magne, Emile Benard and Victor Laloux. It was the terminus for the railways of southwestern France until 1939.

By 1939 the station’s short platforms had become unsuitable for the longer trains that had come to be used for mainline services. After 1939 it was used for suburban services and part of it became a mailing centre during World War II. It was then used as a set for several films, such as Kafka‘s The Trial adapted by Orson Welles, and as a haven for the Renaud-Barrault Theatre Company and for auctioneers, while the Hôtel Drouot was being rebuilt. The station’s hotel closed on 1 January 1973.

Paintings : Major painters and works represented

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres — 4 paintings (the main collection of his paintings is in the Louvre)
Eugène Delacroix — 5 paintings (the main collection of his paintings is in the Louvre)
Theodore Chasseriau — 5 paintings (the main collection of his paintings is in the Louvre)
Gustave Courbet — 48 paintings including The Artist’s Studio, A Burial at Ornans, Young Man Sitting, L’Origine du monde
Jean-François Millet — 27 paintings including Spring, The Gleaners
Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot — 32 paintings (the main collection of his paintings is in the Louvre though) including A Morning. The Dance of the Nymphs
Johan Barthold Jongkind — 9 paintings
Alexandre Cabanel — The Birth of Venus, The Death of Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta
Jean-Leon Gerôme — Portrait of the baroness Nathaniel de Rothschild, Reception of Conde in Versailles, La Comtesse de Keller
Pierre Puvis de Chavannes — Young Girls by the Seaside, The Young Mother also known as Charity, View on the Château de Versailles and the Orangerie
Gustave Moreau — 8 paintings
Honore Daumier — 8 paintings
Eugène Boudin — 33 paintings including Trouville Beach
Camille Pissarro — 46 paintings including White Frost
Edouard Manet — 34 paintings including Olympia, The Balcony, Berthe Morisot With a Bouquet of Violets, The Luncheon on the Grass
Berthe Morisot — 9 paintings
Edgar Degas — 43 paintings including The Parade, also known as Race Horses in front of the Tribunes, The Bellelli Family, The Tub, Portrait of Edouard Manet, Portraits, At the Stock Exchange, L’Absinthe
Paul Cezanne — 56 paintings including Apples and Oranges
Claude Monet — 86 paintings (the main collection of his paintings is in the Musee Marmottan Monet though) including The Saint-Lazare Station, The Rue Montorgueil in Paris. Celebration of June 30, 1878, Wind Effect, Series of The Poplars, Rouen Cathedral. Harmony in Blue, Blue Water Lilies
Alfred Sisley — 46 paintings including Inondation at Port-Marly
Armand Guillaumin — 44 paintings
Frederic Bazille — 6 paintings
Mary Cassatt — 1 painting
Odilon Redon — 106 paintings including Caliban
Pierre-Auguste Renoir — 81 paintings including Bal au moulin de la Galette, Montmartre
Ferdinand Hodler — Der Holzfäller (The Woodcutter)
Gustave Caillebotte — 7 paintings including The Floor Planers
Edouard Detaille — The Dream
Vincent van Gogh — 24 paintings including Self Portrait,The Siesta, The Church at Auvers, View from the Chevet, The Italian Woman, Starry Night Over the Rhone, Portrait of Dr. Gachet, Bedroom in Arles
Paul Gauguin — 24 paintings including Tahitian Women on the Beach
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec — 18 paintings
Eugène Jansson — Proletarian Lodgings
Henri-Edmond Cross — 10 paintings including The Cypresses in Cagnes
Paul Signac — 16 paintings including Women at the Well
Theo van Rysselberghe — 6 paintings
Felix Vallotton — Misia at Her Dressing Table
Georges-Pierre Seurat — 19 paintings including The Circus
Edouard Vuillard — 70 paintings
Henri Rousseau — 3 paintings
Pierre Bonnard — 60 paintings including The Chequered Blouse
Paul Serusier — The Talisman, the Aven River at the Bois d’Amour
Maurice Denis — Portrait of the Artist Aged Eighteen, Princess Maleine’s Minuet or Marthe Playing the Piano, The Green Trees or Beech Trees in Kerduel, October Night (panel for the decoration of a girl’s room)
Andre Derain — Charing Cross Bridge, also known as Westminster Bridge
Edvard Munch — 1 painting
Gustav Klimt — 1 painting
Piet Mondrian — 2 paintings
James McNeill Whistler — 3 paintings including Arrangement in Grey and Black: The Artist’s Mother, also known as Whistler’s Mother
William Adolphe Bouguereau — The Birth of Venus
Cecilia Beaux – Sita and Sarita (Jeune Fille au Chat)