From the Musée Monet to the Musée de l'Orangerie. Located in the heart of the Tuileries Gardens in Paris, the Musée de l'Orangerie was founded in 1927 at the time that Monet's outstanding set of large Water Lilies panels was installed. In the early 1980s, the collection of the art dealer Paul Guillaume, his widow Domenica, and her husband Jean Walter, consisting of major paintings by Cézanne, Renoir, Matisse, Picasso, Derain, Modigliani, Soutine, Utrillo, Rousseau, and Laurencin, was displayed after further restructuring work. In 2006, following complete renovation of the building, top lighting was restored for the Water Lilies, and the rest of the collection set out in the basement in modern, waxed concrete spaces. Lastly, in 2010, the Musée de l'Orangerie was merged with the Musée d'Orsay as a single institution.
The Musée de l'Orangerie today offers an original and powerful exploration of the great figures of the arts in Paris at the turn of the twentieth century. Most of the works in the collection were produced during the first two decades of the twentieth century; together, they form a coherent whole, providing an overview of the Paris avant-garde scene, led by Matisse and Picasso and constructed around the input of their elders-the masters of impressionism.
208 pages / 150 illustrations
Rmn - Grand Palais Publishing in co-publishing with the musée d'Orsay and the musée de l'Orangerie
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