Tags
art, art museum, artists, Impressionism, Musee d'Orsay, painting, sculpture, travel
I could have spent weeks savoring up all this museum has to offer, instead I had five hours. Still I was in heaven. The structure itself is a masterpiece, a renovated train station with a magnificent clock tower set on the Left Bank of the Seine River across from the Louvre.
This was the most visitor-friendly art museum I visited in Europe. An enormous hall was surrounded by various rooms on several floors all flowing into one another. I was forever lost in the Louvre and the Prado, but here I always felt gently guided as I roamed from one room to another in my exploration of all the artwork.
While the Louvre features art created before 1850, d’Orsay picks up from there, featuring an impressive array of Impressionists, both pre and post, including Van Gogh and Gauguin, Monet and Manet, Derain and Degas, Bonnard and Toulouse-Lautrec, Renoir and Cezanne, among others, along with a powerful selection of sculpture, and artwork less familiar to me.
Below is a random sampling of some of the work I loved seeing.
What I loved too was being able to get so close I could see the individual brush strokes. See if you can guess whose paintings these came from.
These are just a fraction of the photos I took, which are a small fraction of all the wonderful artwork on display at the d’Orsay.
I leave you with a painting by only American I can remember seeing, although there may have been others. I was bewitched by this Winslow Homer I’d never seen before. It captures something of the enchantment I felt dancing in the arms of the masters on that magical day.
Deborah J. Brasket 
Stunning beauty!
I’m glad you enjoyed these, Catherine!
amazing … always surprised how small these paintings are…thanks for the effort in putting this all together.
I was surprised about how small some were, and what could be accomplished in such a small space. It was a pleasure working on this post.
Went there on my last visit to Paris. Incredible!
So glad you got a chance to see it. I’ll definitely go again if I return.
I enjoy a good Winslow Homer, but Winslow Homer does not give me goose bumps…until that last photo!
Maybe it’s the dancing by the ‘edge of wild’ that got to me.
Yeah, we do tend to ‘mirror’ each other, flower sister…
Yes it struck me as so unlike Homer, but it gave me goose bumps too.
Lovely! I’m so jealous!
Too many museums to see, too many books to read! It always keeps us hungry and reaching for more.
I loved my time at this museum and was lucky enough to get two visits within three days of each other. Your post is wonderful. photographs were not allowed when I was there – only at the Louvre. I am glad to see they have changed that practice. Thank you so much for sharing your experience Deborah!
I was so happy I could take photos here and in the Louvre! I couldn’t at the Prado or the Picasso Museums in Spain. Now those visits are mostly a haze, while the ones in Paris with the photos are still quite vivid in my memory.
It’s a fabulous museum. Thanks for the tour. Paris is blessed to have so many beautiful museums, it’s hard to pick and choose.
Yes, I wish I could have visited more while i was there. Thank you for stopping by.
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