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Orsay Museum

France.com

A museum in a station

The history of the museum, of its building is quite unusual. In the centre of Paris on the banks of the Seine, opposite the Tuileries Gardens, the museum was installed in the former Orsay railway station, built for the Universal Exhibition of 1900. So the building itself could be seen as the first “work of art” in the Musee d’Orsay, which displays collections of art from the period 1848 to 1914.

 

From station to museum

The Gare d’Orsay then successively served different purposes : it was used as a mailing centre for sending packages to prisoners of war during the Second World War, then those same prisoners were welcomed there on their returning home after the Liberation. It was then used as a set for several films, such as Kafka’s The Trial adapted by Orson Welles, and as a haven for the Renaud-Barrault Theatre Company and for auctioneers, while the Hôtel Drouot was being rebuilt.

The hotel closed its doors on January 1st, 1973, not without having played a historic role: the General de Gaulle held the press conference announcing his return to power in its ballroom (the Salle des Fêtes).

In 1975, the Direction des Musées de France already considered installing a new museum in the train station, in which all of the arts from the second half of the 19th century would be represented. The station, threatened with destruction and replacement by a large modern hotel complex, benefitted instead from the revival of interest in nineteenth-century architecture and was listed on the Supplementary Inventory of Historical Monuments on March 8, 1973. The official decision to build the Musée d’Orsay was taken during the interministerial council of October 20, 1977, on President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing’s initiative. The building was classified a Historical Monument in 1978 and a civil commission was created to oversee the construction and organisation of the museum. The President of the Republic, François Mitterrand, inaugurated the new museum on December 1st, 1986, and it opened to the public on December 9th.

 

The architecture

The station is superb and looks like a Palais des beaux-arts…” wrote the painter Edouard Detaille in 1900. Eighty-six years later, his prophecy was fulfilled.The transformation of the station into a museum was accomplished by ACT architecture group, made up of M. Bardon, M. Colboc and M. Philippon. Their project was chosen in 1979 out of six propositions, and would respect Laloux’s architecture while nonetheless reinterpreting it according to its new function. The project highlighted the great hall, using it as the main artery of the visit, and transformed the magnificent glass awning into the museum’s entrance.

The museum has been organised on three levels: on the ground floor, galleries are distributed on either side of the central nave, which is overlooked by the terraces of the median level, these in turn opening up into additional exhibition galleries. The top floor is installed above the lobby, which covers the length of the Quai, and continues into the highest elevations of the former hotel, over the rue de la Légion d’Honneur (formerly rue de Bellechasse).

The museum’s specific exhibition spaces and different facilities are distributed throughout the three levels: the pavilion Amont, the glass walkway of the former station’s western pinion, the museum restaurant (installed in the dining hall of the former hotel), the Café des Hauteurs, the bookshop and the auditorium.

 

 

History of the collections

  • A national, multidisciplinary museum

The national museum of the Musée d’Orsay opened to the public on 9 December 1986 to show the great diversity of artistic creation in the western world between 1848 and 1914. It was formed with the national collections coming mainly from three establishments:

  • from the Louvre museum, for the works of artists born after 1820 or coming to the fore during the Second Republic;
  • from the Musée du Jeu de Paume, which since 1947 had been devoted to Impressionism;
  • and lastly from the National Museum of Modern Art, which, when it moved in 1976 to the Centre Georges Pompidou, only kept works of artists born after 1870.

But each artistic discipline represented in the Musée d’Orsay collections has its own history :

  • Painting Collection
  • Sculture Collection
  • Objets d’Art Collection
  • Photographic Collection
  • Graphic Arts Collection
  • Architecture

 

New display

The Musée d’Orsay collections contain many large-scale works, not easily put on public display because of their size.
In order to provide these ambitious and spectacular paintings with the space they deserve, room 24 has been entirely rearranged.
Moreover, the creation of this space for large-scale works is part of a much bigger project aiming to improve the presentation of the works of art. From today, a number of rooms have redesigned lighting and new colours for the exhibition walls, and there will be further changes in other areas of the museum over the coming months.

 

Large works in room 24

In spite of all those who prophesied the death of history painting after Romanticism burst onto the scene, it did not disappear after 1848. It continued to bring to life events from the past and the present, to complement the dramatic scenes decorating churches and public buildings, to rival literature in inventiveness and brilliance, and to continue to venture into the are
as of mythology and allegory. Amidst the triumph of landscape and genre scenes, its supporters maintained the artistic tradition of ambitious subjects, noble forms and powerful expression.

Moreover, with their desire to present a fresh view of classical models, the paintings presented in this room offer a different view of the aesthetic proliferation between 1850 and 1880. Bénouville’s Christian Martyrs tends towards Ingres but avoids pastiche; William Bouguereau’s Dance, two years later, draws freely on Pompeian sources. Destined for Anatole Bartholoni’s private residence, now the American Embassy, these three women pictured in flight remind us that monumental painting was not purely in the hands of the public authorities.
The Birth of Venus by the same Bouguereau shows that he did not hesitate, bolstered by success, to use the crudest means to attract the public. The female nude, whatever the pretext, was one of the most common themes in the century of Olympia. Its particular eroticism was often tinged with cruelty or intense violence, and is most evident in the magnificent panorama by Tony Robert-Fleury, The Last Day of Corinth. Clearly, the Romanticism of the catastrophe and the grief here is heightened with sensuality.
The same could be said of Chenavard’s Divine Tragedy and Isabey’s Temptation of Saint Anthony. A dark cataclysm on the one hand, a colourful orgy on the other, both these paintings caused a sensation at the 1869 Salon. And in the end, winning the public over was, and still is, the first objective of history painting.
                                                                                                                                                                                                             Lodging
See the listing of the Hotels the Orsay Museum area

 

 

 

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Practical Informations

Opening time:

9.30am to 6pm
9.30am to 9.45pm on Thursdays
Closed on mondays

Entrance A: individual visitors without ticket
Entrance C: members, visitors with tickets or passes, priority access

Musée d’Orsay entrance: 1, rue de la Légion d’Honneur, 75007 Paris.

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