“When the Musée d’Orsay decides to take 178 Impressionist works on a tour of France for the 150th anniversary of the movement”

2023-12-01 10:06:32

The number is impressive – we would dare to say “impressionist”! There are no less than 178 works illustrating the artistic movement that appeared in France in the last quarter of the 19th century and symbolized by the painting by Claude Monet Print, rising sun, that the Musée d’Orsay will come down from its walls. The Parisian establishment, which houses the largest collection of Impressionist works in the world (400), has decided to take some of them on a tour of France, to mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of the movement (to which by elsewhere in 2024 it will dedicate an exhibition with an immersive tour in virtual reality). It was April 15, 1874, in the Parisian studio of the photographer Nadar, boulevard des Capucines. In a break with the Academy, its official Salon and its imposed styles, around thirty young artists, including Monet, Renoir, Morisot, Sisley and Pissarro, exhibited their work there.

Denigrated by some critics, adored by others, their avant-garde works have gradually won over collectors and the public. Today, programming an exhibition on an impressionist artist means securing record ticket sales. Unsurprisingly, this is currently the case at Orsay with the exhibition devoted to the canvases painted by Van Gogh in the two months preceding his death, which is causing panic among counters. The museum was forced to reduce reservations in order to avoid traffic jams in the rooms.

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It is therefore with joy that thirty-four museums and foundations from thirteen regions welcomed the initiative of the president of the Musée d’Orsay, Christophe Leribault, supported by the Ministry of Culture. From January 2024, works by big names in impressionism will leave the old train station located on the banks of the Seine, where more than three million visitors come to admire them each year, for less frequented places in France (and an establishment on the island of Reunion, the Léon-Dierx Museum). In 1974, for the centenary of the birth of the movement – ​​the Musée d’Orsay did not yet exist – the Grand Palais in Paris brought impressionist treasures from different provincial establishments. Fifty years later, the circuit is reversed.

“Cultural democracy”

“The paintings leave the capital to go to the regions, to meet the public who do not come to Paris or Orsay. It’s a great operation of cultural democracy,” applauds Mélanie Lerat, director of MUba Eugène-Leroy, in Tourcoing (North), who will benefit from an exceptional loan of fifty-seven paintings. Thanks to the creation of the Louvre-Lens eleven years ago, residents of the region already have the chance to come and admire, in the heart of the mining basin, treasures from the Parisian palace, including the Egyptian statue. The Crouching Scribe et The Lacemaker, by Vermeer, loaned for a period of one year.

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