Masterpieces of the Musée d'Orsay Photographic Collection
Théâtre romain d'Arles, en 1851
Musée d'Orsay
© Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Patrice Schmidt
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The Musée d'Orsay inaugurates a new permanent gallery to present the photographic collection of the museum, which covers a large part of the first century of this technique. Located on the ground floor of the museum, on the side of the Rue de Lille, these three galleries, representing around 130 square metres, were previously reserved for documentary and temporary exhibitions.
This new permanent exhibition space will from now on allow an extensive presentation of the museum photographic collection and the presence of this technique among the others -painting, sculpture, architecture and decorative arts-, will be stressed. As photographic prints cannot be exhibited permanently, the works exhibited will change three times a year according to various themes.
Dignité, 1872
Collection Agence d'architecture de l'Opéra de Paris - Musée d'Orsay
Mode d'acquisition inconnu, s.d. ; Dépôt de l'agence d'architecture de l'Opéra de Paris, 1983
© Musée d’Orsay, dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Patrice Schmidt
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Begun ex nihilo in 1979, the Musée d'Orsay photographic collection was compiled through permanent loans, gifts and acquisitions and has benefited from the repeated support of the Commission Nationale de la Photographie, of the Fond du Patrimoine and of the Société des Amis du Musée d'Orsay. It also received donations from the Fondation Kodak-Pathé in Vincennes and permanent loans by other institutions (Manufacture de Sèvres, Fondation Dosne-Thiers).
Victor Hugo, vers 1853
Musée d'Orsay
© Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Patrice Schmidt
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Centred on French photography, it nevertheless includes works by foreign photographers, British and American in particular, and it now totals some 50 000 pictures of all kinds (prints, negatives, albums...), works by famous photographers (Nadar, Le Gray, Stieglitz...) or by less well-known ones, reflecting the formal innovations of the medium, from the publication of the first photographic processes, in 1839, to the 1920's.
La barricade de la rue Saint-Maur-Popincourt après l'attaque par les troupes du général Lamoricière, le lundi 26 juin 1848, en 1848
Musée d'Orsay
Acquis avec le concours du Patrimoine photographique, 2002
© Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Alexis Brandt
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To inaugurate this new exhibition space, a selection of eighty five pieces among the most representative and striking of the collection is presented. The selection ranges from the beginnings of the technique to the 1920's, and gives a large place to acquisitions of recent years: the exhibition starts with daguerreotypes, mostly French, many of which are incunabula of photography (Portrait of Delacroix in 1842, 1848 Barricades on the Rue Saint-Maur, Panorama of the Harbour in Toulon in 1845, Portrait of Victor Hugo, 1851). It continues with rare prints of the 1840's and 1850's, works by English (Fox Talbot, the inventor of the process), but above all French pioneers of paper photography.
Charles Baudelaire au fauteuil, vers 1855
Musée d'Orsay
Acquis par les Musées nationaux, 1991
© Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Patrice Schmidt
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The 1850's, often considered as the golden age of French photography, are particularly well represented in the museum collection: Nadar (Portrait of Baudelaire), Gustave Le Gray (Seascapes), as well as Charles Nègre, whose emblematic picture Le Stryge was recently acquired in a public auction. To these names are added those of Hugo, Baldus, Regnault, Marville and many views of Egypt (from the department of Egyptian antiquities of the Louvre), of the Middle East (Sauvaire, Salzmann) or of India (de Lagrange) from the 1850's and 1860's.
Mer Méditerranée, Mont Agde, 1857
Musée d'Orsay
Achat, 1990
© Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Alexis Brandt
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The end of the century is represented by shots taken by artists, painters and engravers (Degas, Bonnard, Rivière), who practised this technique as amateurs.
The exhibition ends with the modernist trend of the medium, with works by Atget, a 19th-century photographer considered a pioneer of photographic modernity at the beginning of the 20th century, with Anglo-Saxon pictorialists, Haviland, Steichen and Stieglitz.