Millet, Courbet and French Naturalism : Masterpieces from the Musée d'Orsay

Nearly a decade after the immense success of the 2004-2005 Impressionist Treasures exhibition, the Musée d'Orsay is back in Shanghai to present the first major international exhibition in the newly-opened China Art Museum inaugurated on 1 October and housed in what was formerly the Chinese Pavilion of the 2010 World fair.

Millet, Courbet and French Naturalism features 87 masterpieces from the Musée d'Orsay collection and will give visitors of this new museum an overview of the founding and evolution of 19th-century French realist and naturalist painting.
In addition to Millet and Courbet, all the major protagonists of these pictorial movements are represented: Jules Bastien-Lepage, Alfred Roll, Rosa Bonheur, as well as the painters of the Ecole de Barbizon, including Corot…, artists who broke free from contemporary academic rules to not only deliver a new vision of nature, but to also represent the men around them, the traditions and the profound mutations of a rapidly-changing society.