The Orsay Museum … again

I have of course already posted about the Orsay Museum (see here and here), but I recently went back for the temporary exhibition of one of my favourite artists, Berthe Morisot. 

The Orsay Museum had established a rule about “no photos”, but now photos are again allowed (except of some privately owned and temporarily exhibited items). I could thus have taken tens, hundreds of photos, but… I took only a few… including the top one of one of the clocks, seen from the inside.

Here are two paintings by Berthe Morisot (1841-1895). The “Lady in Black” (a lady prepared to go to the theatre) is from 1875, the second one is called “Daydreaming” and is from 1894. We can see her daughter Julie Manet (1878-1966). We know that Berthe was married to Eugène Manet, Edouard Manet’s younger brother. Julie was their only child.

I made of course a little walk around the museum and could thus have taken an unlimited number of photos, but here are just a few of the more famous pre-impressionist, impressionist and post-impressionist ones – Manet, Monet, Renoir, van Gogh… and of what may be considered to have been the “model” for the “Statue of Liberty” (on which I posted a number of times, e.g. here and here).

I also again admired this painting by Marie Bashkirtseff (1858-1894). She died at the age of 36 and this painting called “La Réunion” (the meeting) is from 1884 - look at the details. I wrote about her in a previous post, about the Passy Cemetery, where she is buried, as are most of the members of the Manet family (the Manet brothers, Berthe Morisot, her daughter Julie…).

In front of the Orsay Museum...

When I last wrote about the Orsay Museum  (see here) one was not allowed to take photos inside. This seems now to have changed…, but in any case, what now follows is about what you find outside the museum, on the esplanade.

The major installation here is a collection of six statues, referred to as representing the “Six Continents”. They were originally created for the third Paris World’s Fair or “Exposition Universelle” in 1878, could be found in front of the “Palais de Trocadero” and remained there until the construction of the “Palais de Chaillot” for the Paris World’s Fair in 1937 (referred to as “International Exposition of Art and Technology in Modern Life”, see my posts here and here). An amazing thing is that these statues, which in 1935 were transferred to the city of Nantes, ended up on a public dump before being saved and installed in front of the museum when it was opened in 1986. (I found the picture of the abandoned statues on this site.)

The Eiffel Tower was of course constructed only 11 years later than the 1878 exhibition, but here we can see not only where the “Six Continents” were placed, but also some pictures of animal statues, which also remained at the Trocadero until 1935 and now also can be found in front of the Orsay Museum.

A closer look on the statues, representing the “Six Continents”.

Well…

So, in front of the Museum, we can also find the “Jeune Eléphant pris au Piège” par Emmanuel Fremiet…

… the “Rhinocéros” by Alfred Jacquemart…

… and the “Cheval à la Herse” by Pierre Rouillard.

Behind the museum, you can find two statues by Antoine Bourdelle, named “Force de Volonté” and “Victoire”. (I wrote recently, here, about the Bourdelle Museum.)

Here are links to the different artists named above: Alexandre Schoenewerk, Alexandre Falguière, Eugène Delaplanche, Ernest Hiolle, Aimé Millet, Mathurin Moreau-Vauthier, Emmanuel Fremiet, Alfred Jacquemart, Pierre Rouillard, Antoine Bourdelle.

Orsay Museum

After five years of blogging about Paris, I have not yet made a post about the Musée d’Orsay. I have hesitated, taking into consideration that photos from the inside are not longer allowed. The rules vary from one museum to the other; photos are e.g. allowed at the Louvre…

I can somehow understand this interdiction. It’s quite frustrating when you reach the Mona Lisa at the Louvre and hardly can see it because of a crowd of people taking photos of the painting and their wife or husband standing in front of it. I think more and more that art in museums is to be seen, contemplated… forgetting about the perfect photo for your blog or your personal album. … and now, if you wish to see e.g. the Orsay collection on your computer screen, you can just go to the “Google Art Project” and find 225 artworks by 130 artists or to other sites about this museum.

But to be able to show the architecture of the interor is something different. I thought that I could be allowed to show one or two photos of the stunning interior of the building, which was first built as a railway station, built for the Universal Exhibition of 1900. From 1900 until 1939 the Orsay Railway Station, which included a hotel, was used as the head of the railway lines leading to the southwest of France and later for some suburb lines. It closed in 1973. There were some plans to replace the building by a modern hotel, but finally – and fortunately – the decision was made to classify the building and transform it to the museum it is today, opening in 1986.

There is of course, until further notice, no problem with taking photos of the exterior.

The station was originally built for the “Compagnie du chemin de fer de Paris à Orléans”, known as “PO”. You can read the different destinations the trains wen to written on the building – Bordeaux, Toulouse, Limoges… 

... and also the “PO” (which I could use for my personal initials). 

The great clocks can be seen from the outside as well as the inside.

So, today, to see the fabulous art collection, covering the period 1848-1914, including some 5.000 paintings (Bashkirtseff, Bazille, Bernard, Böcklin, Bonheur, Caillebotte, Cézanne, Corot, Courbet, Degas, Daumier, Delacroix, Fantin-Latour, Gauguin, Ingres, Jongkind, Klimt, Manet, Millet, Monet, Moreau, Morisot, Pissarro, Redon, Renoir, Rousseau, Seurat, Signac, Sisley, Toulouse-Lautrec, van Gogh, Vuillard…), some 2.000 sculptures (Bugatti, Degas, Rodin…), photos, architectural designs (Baltard, Guimard…), medals, other artwork (Christofle, Gaudi, Guimard, Tiffany… ) the best is to go there (together with some three million other annual visitors), or possibly to look on the Google selection.