The paintings of the Musée dOrsay. An exceptional collection. Built up over time through purchases by the state, donations and bequests from artists, collectors and patrons, and also thanks to an active acquisitions policy, the Musée dOrsays collection of pictures today constitutes an exceptional holding represented by the greatest names and schools of painting between 1848 and 1914: — official art (history painting, portraits and classic landscapes); — symbolism (Moreau, Puvis de Chavannes, Redon); — realism (Courbet, Fantin-Latour); — the Barbizon school (Corot, Millet, Rousseau); — impressionism (Caillebotte, Cézanne, Degas, Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Sisley); — post-impressionism (Seurat, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec); — the Nabis (Bonnard, Denis, Vuillard). For its new hanging in the picture galleries, the Musée dOrsay is highlighting its extraordinary masterpieces to offer the public an increasingly complete yet fresh survey of that fruitful and varied era, one of the most creative and abundant in the history of art. Published for this occasion, the volume presents 300 works in an order that is both chronological and thematic, thereby offering a comprehensive overview of the history of painting of the period, with the didactic intent of rendering it accessible to the widest possible public.
