Paris, 21 April 2012

rue de Rivoli from the Tuileries Gardens

Since we were unable to get advance tickets to the Musée d'Orsay, we lined up at 9.30 this morning when the doors opened. Despite our worst fears, we only needed to queue for fifteen minutes before we were able to gain entry into the great gallery.

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 Musée d'Orsay, which displays collections of art from the period 1848 to 1914. As a work of art in its own right, it has retained its glorious railway clocks both inside and outside the building.

Interior Clock

Exterior Clock

The heart of the museum is the great courtyard filled with sculpture, while on either side there are galleries containing some of the finest artworks in the world.

The Great Courtyard

At the moment there are a number of special exhibitions. We went to "Degas and the nude," which was huge. One tends to associate the artist with his famous ballet paintings, but he did hundreds of sketches, pastels and paintings of nudes, many of which differ only slightly one from another. While we tend to think of nudes in art as being female, Degas has dozens of works of nude males.
 The other special exhibition offered the work of a Finnish painter, Axel Gallén. Some beautiful paintings many of which were built around Finland's mythology.

Mary Gallén in a Rocky Landscape

Imatra in Winter

  The collection of impressionists is one of the gallery's strongest areas and wandering amongst the works of so many of that school was an absolute treat. The popularity of the Musée d'Orsay can best be measured in the number of visitors. In recent years this has amounted to more than 3,000,000 per year.

Alexander Harrison, La Solitude

On leaving the gallery we walked through the Tuileries Gardens to the Metro station at Concorde, admiring the buildings along the rue de Rivololi.

After a late lunch, we made our way up to the Place du Tertre for a drink before calling it a day.