Musee d'Orsay
Sunday Sept 19, 2004
After finishing our visit to the Louvre Museum, we headed over the Pont du Carrousel to the Musee d'Orsay just on the
other side of the river Seine. The Musee d'Orsay is housed within an old railway station, which gives this museum
a unique feel and a gorgeous look. The original train station was built in 1900 on the banks of the Seine, and
faces the Tuileries Gardens and the Louvre Museum.
Since its opening in 1986, the Musee d'Orsay has been one of the most celebrated museums in the world.
The museum is devoted to the second half of the 19th century, and has a killer collection of paintings,
sculptures, furniture, decorative arts, architecture, drawings, and photography - all produced essentially
between 1850 and 1914.
However, in my opinion, what really makes this museum stand out are the works from
the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists, such as Renior, Manet, Cezanne, Seurat, Gauguin, Van Gogh,
Degas, and Monet, to name a few. They also have an impressive collection of Art Nouveau decorative art pieces
including some of the work of Hector Guimard, (the designer of the famous Art Nouveau, Paris Metro signs),
Rene Lalique, and Charles Rennie Mackintosh. I was probably more impressed with the Musee d'Orsay than with the Louvre.
