The Museum in motion
In a large museum, changes are orchestrated by the movement of artworks. With new displays, recent acquisitions, returning loans, restorations, new combinations and deposits, small adjustments or major transformations, the presentation of the collections is continually evolving. On this page you will find regularly updated information on the principal changes in the Musée d'Orsay galleries, and on new discoveries to be made.
Gauguin's Paintings on Glass
Floral and Plant Motifs and Tahitian Woman in a Landscape, date from 1893 when Gauguin moved to Paris after his first visit to Polynesia. At that time he was continuing the decorative research that he had embarked on in the late 1880s when he decorated the windows of Marie Henry's inn at Le Pouldu, and which he pursued again in Tahiti in 1892, painting the glass panes in the window of a house.
Wishing no doubt to create his own exotic decor on his return to Paris, on this occasion he chose the glass panes of the doors of his studio in rue Vercingétorix as a support, and composed these two landscapes. They remained in situ when the artist left for his last trip in 1895 and were only placed on deposit in 1905. In the end it was the widow of the American painter Harold English, their last owner, who gave them to the French National Museums in 1958.
This presentation is therefore quite an event, as these works from the reserve collections demonstrate one of Gauguin's principal concerns, as he stated in a letter to his friend Daniel de Monfreid: "Painted glass which attracts the eye with its groupings of colours and forms, is still the best".
Due to technical reasons, the stained glass Tahitian Woman in a Landscape has not yet been installed in its showcase. It will be soon.
The Opening of the New "Luxembourg" Rooms
The first three rooms, on the south side of the nave, were reopened to the public on 29 January 2013. The new design produced by architect Virginia Fienga, in close consultation with Guy Cogeval and the team of curators, opens up the space so that works of art can be displayed at several different levels on high walls painted in Pompeian red. This new museography conjures up the atmosphere of the Musée du Luxembourg, the forerunner of the Musée d'Orsay.
Room 1
The first room provides a link with the Musée du Louvre. It presents the two French artists who were the titans of painting in the 1850s in the eyes of both the state authorities and the public: Delacroix, "the master of colour" and Ingres, "the master of drawing" along with his followers, Amaury-Duval and Flandrin. The critics at the time regularly highlighted the contrasts between Ingres and Delacroix.
Between these two diametrically opposed aesthetic approaches was Chassériau who aimed to combine both in his work.
Room 2
The second room is devoted to the academic painters who contributed to the radical reform of history painting during the Second Empire through their unprecedented archaeological accuracy and their use of elements borrowed from the Realist aesthetic: Léon Bénouville, Emile Lévy and above all, Jean-Léon Gérôme.
The sculptures of Antoine-Louis Barye for the Tuileries Palace and other official commissions reveal just how diverse and creative these "academic" works were.
Room 3
The third section is devoted to the triumph of the female nude of mythology. The final masterpieces of this genre inherited from the Venetian painters of the Renaissance were produced in the 1860s by Paul Baudry, Alexandre Cabanel and William Bouguereau.
The birth of Venus became the emblematic subject of academic painting and, ultimately, the focus of avant-garde contempt. Pride of place in this room goes to the painter William Bouguereau, a large number of whose works entered the Musée d'Orsay collections in 2009.
A Showcase for the “Liberty Style”
At the beginning of the 20th century, the decorative arts in Italy continued a great tradition in arts and crafts, with artists taking it upon themselves to express the newly unified nation’s desire for progress. Italian Art Nouveau, known as the "Liberty Style" or "floral style", became established in 1902 at the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts in Turin, where great furniture designers like Eugenio Quarti, Ernesto Basile, Carlo Zen and Carlo Bugatti, exhibited their works.
With its love of sinuous lines inspired by natural forms, at times with exotic overtones, the “Liberty Style” was close to that of other movements throughout Europe, yet still retained its own distinctive characteristics. A particularly eloquent example of this is the chair designed by Carlo Bugatti as part of a complete suite of furniture that he presented in Turin. This "games and conversation room" reproduced a snail shell on a human scale, hence the name “snail room” ("camera a chiocciola"). Other Italian designers sought out new and original forms of expression. The desk designed by Federico Tesio for his villa in Dormelletto (Novara) on Lake Maggiore, where he bred racehorses, is both a unique work and a leading example of Italian "Liberty".
The sumptuous procession of princesses and warriors arriving to pay homage to Aladdin’s wife provided an opportunity to display a lavish range of colours whose decorative impact is enhanced with gold lozenges. The influence of Klimt is particularly evident here, but its idiom remains that of the Venetian tradition: the works of Vivarini, and the mosaics and stained glass windows of the famous lagoon city.
Current reorganisations
The Musée d'Orsay is continuing with the reorganisation of its collections, which involves the temporary closure of some rooms on the ground floor, and we wish to apologise for any inconvenience caused.
However, the major artworks from these spaces have been relocated and remain on public display.
Redon, return of the Domecy decorative panels to Orsay
Following the recent renovation works, in particular those for the Amont Pavilion, the Musée d'Orsay can now exhibit the panels created by Odilon Redon between 1900 and 1901 for the dining room in the château of Baron Robert de Domecy (at Domecy-sur-le-Vault, in Burgundy), one of the most avid collectors of Redon's work. Acquired in 1988, these works had rarely been put on display because of a lack of suitable space to present and conserve them. The public was however able to rediscover them at the Odilon Redon. Prince of Dreams exhibition held at the Grand Palais from March to June 2011 before it went on to Montpellier and then Madrid.
Since the early1890s, Redon had abandoned lithography and the charcoal of his famous Noirs in order to draw in pastel and to paint with vivid colours. It is hardly surprising that this evolution finally brought him to decorative art, a genre that preoccupied artists throughout the late 19th century. The Domecy panels are, moreover, thoroughly representative of Redon's art as he combined all the media he normally used (tempera, oil, pastel, etc) in order to plunge us into a luminous natural world, filled with fantasy and the influences of Japanism, in which the few characters depicted echo earlier works. It is therefore a crucial stage in the career of a leading artist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and as such, it was important to present it in the best possible conditions. On level 2 of the Amont Pavilion, the decorative panels from Domecy are now alongside other great decorative works, those of the Nabis who regarded Redon as one of their masters, and alongside the furniture of the period... in their natural environment.
New Acquisitions: Von Stuck, Ranson
On the ground floor, the display in the new Symbolist gallery has just been renewed with the addition of two important recent acquisitions: Expulsion from Paradise by the German painter Franz von Stuck (1863-1923) and The Sorceress and the Black Cat by Paul Ranson (1861-1909).
In the first painting, Stuck seizes on a famous episode from the Bible, the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, that he represents in a stark composition highlighting the human emotions. Typical of Symbolism at the end of the 19th century in its sophistication and its moral dimension, Expulsion from Paradise is also an important milestone in the history of contemporary art, as it inspired Vassily Kandinsky, a pupil of Stuck in the early 20th century, in his Study for Improvisation 8 (1909), one of the stages that would lead him towards abstraction.
From 1891 until the end of his life, Paul Ranson produced a series of esoteric works in which the figure of the sorceress appears regularly. Surrounded by cabalistic symbols and shadow play, this Sorceress and the Black Cat, remains mysterious. We do not know if the shapes surrounding her represent her malevolent powers, or if she is plagued by nightmares. The composition corresponds perfectly with the aesthetic principles of the Nabis - arabesques, thick outlines, areas of flat colour, synthetism – and reflects the group’s interest in decorative forms.
New acquisition: Daumier's The Woodcutters
Since it was set up in 1980, the Société des Amis du Musée d'Orsay has continued to take an active role in enriching the collections. On the 25th anniversary of the opening of the museum, this association has once again demonstrated its great generosity with the gift of The Woodcutters, an oil on wood produced by Honoré Daumier around 1855.
This sketch is closely linked to an oil on canvas by Jean-François Millet, The Wood Sawyers (London, Victoria and Albert Museum), echoing the composition in almost every detail. It therefore offers valuable proof of the close contact between the two artists around 1850 when they were in Paris and Barbizon.
The Woodcutters will now be exhibited in room 4, devoted exclusively to the work of Daumier, and can be seen in relation to The Laundress which also depicts representatives of the working class, a theme that the painter studied in the 1850-60s.
Picasso's Absinthe Drinker on long-term loan to the Musée d'Orsay
Although his work has been exhibited at the Musée de l'Orangerie, Pablo Picasso is not one of the artists who usually feature in the Musée d'Orsay's permanent collections. This deposit of a painting from a private collection is therefore a major event, as much for the quality of the work as for its resonance with the paintings around it.
Displayed in the room devoted to Parisian lifestyle (ground floor, room 10), The Absinthe Drinker (1901) hangs alongside scenes of entertainment, dance halls, brothels, portraits by Toulouse-Lautrec, Boldini and Anquetin, and once again reveals the fascination that bohemian Paris held for so many painters at the end of the 19th century. It is also a unique opportunity for visitors to compare this absinthe drinker by Picasso with that of Degas displayed in the Impressionist gallery.
A History Painting: Etienne Marcel, Provost of the Merchants, and the Dauphin Charles
On the ground floor of the Musée d'Orsay, at the far end of the Seine gallery devoted to Salon paintings, are the artworks that achieved success at the great annual exhibitions organised by the Académie des Beaux-arts. For his submission to the 1879 Salon, Lucien Mélingue chose an episode from the political conflicts that shook France during the Hundred Years War (1337-1453).
On 22 February 1358, Etienne Marcel, the provost of the merchants of Paris, invaded the Palais de la Cité at the head of a crowd of 3000 people, with the purpose of defending the interests of the wealthy urban traders against the policies of the Dauphin Charles (1338-1380) – the future Charles V – acting as Regent since his father, John II the Good, was taken prisoner by the English in 1356. The Maréchal de Champagne and the Maréchal de Normandie were assassinated by the rioters in front of the startled young man's very eyes. Mélingue depicts the moment when Etienne Marcel saves the life of the heir to the throne, symbolically giving each figure the other's hat. The dauphin is thus adorned in the colours of Paris – red and blue – while the provost, wearing the fleur-de-lis, affirms his support for royal power.
Acquired by the State, the painting was originally exhibited at the Musée du Luxembourg, then at the Louvre, before being placed on long-term loan in the Musée de Beaune.
Today, at the heart of the Musée d'Orsay collections, it is a wonderful example of the genre of history painting, so popular with the public in the 19th century.
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