Day 3. Musee d'Orsay - great for lovers of Impressionism

Today, we visited the Musee d'Orsay, a museum which is located in a former Beaux-Arts railway station.  The building is wonderfully over the top in some ways, partly in its lights, decorative finishes and clocks, 

but also in the way it juxtaposes ultra modern elements with the past.  For instance, I loved the way the restaurant  used these lolly coloured plastic chairs 

 

and the cafe these golden light covers and colourful wire dividers..

The collection of the museum focuses on the period between 1848 and 1900, and gives the visitor a wonderful opportunity to view Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists and gain an understanding of how the artists learned from each other and developed their own individual techniques and styles. Visiting the museum had me itching to go back to using oils and experimenting with paint.
Artists included  Gauguin, Monet, Van Gogh (eg " L'Eglise d"Auvers-sur-Oise, vue du chevet")

Henri de  Toulouse-Lautrec ( eg "Dame au Boa Noir")

Renoir,  Millet, Degas and Pisarro.  Some of the other works we came across were "La Femme a la Cafetiere" by Paul Cezanne

Claude Monet's studies on "La Cathedrale de Rouen",

Claude Monet's "Le Bassin aux Nymphes, Harmonie Verte",

"Vue des Toits (Effet de Neige)" by Gustave Caillebotte 

and  "La Dame aux Eventails" by Eduard Manet.

The collection also includes sculptures, including this one by Edgar Degas, "Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans",

Francois Pompom's owl,

 Auguste Rodin's "La Pensee"

"Le Grenouillard" by Jean-Joseph Carries

and Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux's  "Les Quatre Parties du Monde Soutenant la Sphere Celeste".  I found this latter sculpture  very amusing.  It purports to portray female representatives of Europe, Asia, North America and Africa, but all the women are very European in appearance and they all have very European bodies.  The African representative is manacled.

There is also, in the museum  a section dedicated to Art Nouveau which I found very interesting

If you go to the Musee d'Orsay, don't forget to look out the windows for some magnificent views too:

I loved this museum.  It is really worth visiting