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musee dÒrsay with basilique du Sacre coeur in the background

The Musée d'Orsay is a museum in Paris, France, on the left bank of the Seine, housed in the former railway station, the Gare d'Orsay, an impressive Beaux-Arts edifice built between 1898 and 1900. It holds mainly French art dating from 1848 to 1915, including paintings, sculptures, furniture, and photography, and is probably best known for its extensive collection of impressionist masterpieces by such painters such as Monet, Degas, Renoir, and Cezanne. Many of these works were held at the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume prior to the museum's opening in 1986.

 

The museum building was originally a railway station, Gare d'Orsay, constructed for the Chemin de Fer de Paris à Orléans and finished in time for the 1900 Exposition Universelle to the design of three architects: Lucien Magne, Émile Bénard and Victor Laloux. It was the terminus for the railways of southwestern France until 1939.

 

By 1939 the station's short platforms had become unsuitable for the longer trains that had come to be used for mainline services. After 1939 it was used for suburban services and part of it became a mailing center during World War II. 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 station's hotel closed on 1 January 1973.

 

In 1977 the French Government decided to convert the station to a museum. ACT Architecture (Renaud Bardon, Pierre Colboc and Jean-Paul Philippon) were the designers and the construction work was carried by Bouygues. The Italian architect Gae Aulenti oversaw the design of the conversion from 1980 to 1986.

 

 

The interior of the museum.The work involved creating 20,000 sq. m. of new floorspace on four floors. The new museum was opened by President François Mitterrand on 1 December 1986.

 

Major painters and works represented

Gustave Courbet — The Artist's Studio, Young Man Sitting, L'Origine du monde

Jean-François Millet — Spring, The Gleaners

Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot — A Morning. The Dance of the Nymphs

Alexandre Cabanel — The Birth of Venus, The Death of Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta

Jean-Léon Gérôme — Portrait of the baroness Nathaniel de Rothschild, Reception of Condé in Versailles, La Comtesse de Keller

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes — Young Girls by the Seaside, The Young Mother also known as Charity, View on the Château de Versailles and the Orangerie

Eugène Boudin — Trouville Beach

Camille Pissarro — White Frost

Édouard Manet — Olympia, The Balcony, Berthe Morisot With a Bouquet of Violets, The Luncheon on the Grass

Edgar Degas — The Parade, also known as Race Horses in front of the Tribunes, The Bellelli Family, The Tub, Portrait of Edouard Manet, Portraits, At the Stock Exchange, L’Absinthe

Paul Cézanne — Apples and Oranges

Claude Monet — The Saint-Lazare Station, The Rue Montorgueil in Paris. Celebration of June 30, 1878, Wind Effect, Series of The Poplars, Rouen Cathedral. Harmony in Blue, Blue Water Lilies

Odilon Redon — Caliban

Pierre-Auguste Renoir — Bal au moulin de la Galette, Montmartre

Jules Desbois — Destitution

Ferdinand Hodler — Der Holzfäller (The Woodcutter)

Gustave Caillebotte — The Floor Planers

Édouard Detaille — The Dream

Brian Wright — "The Man"

Vincent van Gogh — Self Portrait,The Siesta, The Church at Auvers, View from the Chevet, The Italian Woman, Starry Night Over the Rhone, Portrait of Dr. Gachet

Eugène Jansson — Proletarian Lodgings

Paul Signac — Women at the Well

Félix Vallotton — Misia at Her Dressing Table

Georges-Pierre Seurat — The Circus

Pierre Bonnard — The Chequered Blouse

André Devambez — The Charge

Paul Sérusier — The Talisman, the Aven River at the Bois d'Amour

Maurice Denis — Portrait of the Artist Aged Eighteen, Princess Maleine's Minuet or Marthe Playing the Piano, The Green Trees or Beech Trees in Kerduel, October Night (panel for the decoration of a girl's room)

André Derain — Charing Cross Bridge, also known as Westminster Bridge

James McNeill Whistler — Arrangement in Grey and Black: The Artist's Mother, also known as Whistler's Mother

William Adolphe Bouguereau — The Birth of Venus

Cecilia Beaux – Sita and Sarita (Jeune Fille au Chat)

 

Major sculptors

François Rude, Jules Cavelier, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Auguste Rodin, Paul Gauguin, Camille Claudel and Honoré Daumier.

 

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Uploaded on October 25, 2009
Taken on September 23, 2008