MUSÉE DE L’ORANGERIE

Description

Essentials about the Musée de l’Orangerie in brief

Art lovers, especially those who are passionate about Impressionism and Late Impressionism, should definitely plan a visit to the Musée de l’Orangerie during a trip to Paris. For in the art museum, beautifully located in the southwest corner of the Tuileries Garden right next to the Seine and the Place de la Concorde, visitors can expect to see some of the most famous works of these styles.

The history and the building of the Musée de l’Orangerie

As its name already suggests, the Musée de l’Orangerie is housed in the Orangerie of the Tuileries Garden, completed in the mid-19th century, which used to store the cold-sensitive plants of the Garden during the winter months. At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, the orangery served a wide variety of purposes, such as a materials store, barracks, concert and festival hall, gymnasium, but also space for various exhibitions. It was not until 1921 that the Parisian Fine Arts Administration transformed the Orangery building into a branch of the Musée du Luxembourg dedicated to contemporary art.

The collection of the Musée de l’Orangerie

In the 1920s, the current centerpiece of the art collection arrived at the Orangerie: the eight large water lily paintings by Claude Monet. With their monumental dimensions of 17 meters wide, 2 meters high and a total length of more than 100 meters, the paintings were installed in two oval rooms, so that they depict Monet’s water lily pond there as a kind of panorama.

Between 1959 and 1963, the museum acquired the important collection of Jean Walter and Paul Guillaume, which is now exhibited in a new underground building next to the Orangerie. The Walter-Guillaume collection is characterized by the restriction to a few, but very renowned artists, from whom mostly larger groups of works are on display. From the camp of the Imressionists and Late Impressionists, Renoir, Sisley, Gauguin, Cézanne and Rousseau are particularly represented. Another focus of the collection are artists from the first decades of the 20th century. These include Derain, Soutine, Utrillo, Picasso, Modigliani, Matisse and Laurencin.