This museum, located in the former Orsay railway
train station built in 1900, is dedicated to all forms of
artistic expression: painting, sculpture and photography
of the 1848-1914 period. The era of the impressionist painters
is particularly well represented with the masterpieces of
Manet, Monet, Renoir, Degas... Admire the delicate brush
strokes of Renoir, the serious self-portrait of Van Gogh,
the radiance of a Monet's landscape amongst other artistic
marvels.
Built by architect Victor Laloux in 1900, the "Gare d'Orsay"
was one of the Paris stations with trains to the south-west
of France (Orlˆßans and Bordeaux). Located across the Louvre
on the Seine river left bank, it has been spectacularly
renovated from 1977 to 1986 to house the Orsay museum.
The Orsay museum (Musée d'Orsay in french) is the
19th century French arts museum. It is known worldwide for
its famous impressionists collections and is a must to arts
lovers.
In the 1870, the "Impressionism" was a French "Avant-garde"
painters group rejected by the official academy. The impressionists
(among them Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet, Edgar Manet, Théo
Van Gogh and Paul Cézanne) painted ordinary life
and people on the spot and in the open air.
They rejected historical and mythological subjects. They
used light colors. Above all, they are famous for having
departed from the tradition of painting "reality". They
instead used color spots and strokes to suggest their "impression"
of the reality that only reveals itself from the distance.