Splendid! Amazing! Essentially Paris!

All these adjectives apply to the Musée d'Orsay. It is sumptuous, spacious, modern and old at the same time. One marvels at this creative use of the patrimony of a great sity. The vast space of an unused railway station made into a grand museum of modern art. Nothing crowded, nothing rushed, plenty of air and light. And then! One is surrounded by the breathlessly famous and beautiful masterpieces that have defined what we call modern art today.

According to the Wikipedia entry on the Musée d'Orsay:

Guided Visit of Orsay Museum

Additional Information

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• Entrance fee
• Guided visit of Orsay Museum
• Conducted by a qualified guide-interpreter

• Optional gratuities
• Hotel pick up and drop off
• Food and drink, unless specified

• This tour must be booked at least 24 hours in advance of your travel date
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• Tour is operated in English unless otherwise stated

• This tour must be booked at least 24 hours in advance of your travel date
• Confirmation for this product will be received at time of booking

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Major painters

• Gustave Courbet — The Artist's Studio, Young Man Sitting, L'Origine du monde
• Jean-François Millet — Spring, The Gleaners
• Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot — A Morning. The Dance of the Nymphs
• Jean-Léon Gérôme — Portrait of the baroness Nathaniel de Rothschild, Reception of Condé in Versailles, La Comtesse de Keller
• Pierre Puvis de Chavannes — Young Girls by the Seaside, The Young Mother also known as Charity, View on the Château de Versailles and the Orangerie
• Eugène Boudin — Trouville Beach
• Camille Pissarro — White Frost
• Édouard Manet — Olympia, The Balcony, Berthe Morisot With a Bouquet of Violets, The Luncheon on the Grass
• Edgar Degas — The Parade, also known as Race Horses in front of the Tribunes, The Bellelli Family, The Tub, Portrait of Edouard Manet, Portraits, At the Stock Exchange, L’Absinthe
• Paul Cézanne — Apples and Oranges
• Claude Monet — The Saint-Lazare Station, The Rue Montorgueil in Paris. Celebration of June 30, 1878, Wind Effect, Series of The Poplars, Rouen Cathedral. Harmony in Blue
• Odilon Redon — Caliban
• Pierre-Auguste Renoir — Bal au moulin de la Galette, Montmartre
• Jules Desbois — Destitution
• Ferdinand Hodler — Der Holzfäller (The Woodcutter)
• Gustave Caillebotte — The Floor Planers
• Édouard Detaille — The Dream
• Vincent Van Gogh — The Siesta, The Church at Auvers, View from the Chevet, The Italian Woman, Starry Night Over the Rhone, Portrait of Dr. Gachet
• Eugène Jansson — Proletarian Lodgings
• Paul Signac — Women at the Well
• Félix Vallotton — Misia at Her Dressing Table
• Georges-Pierre Seurat — The Circus
• Pierre Bonnard — The Chequered Blouse
• Paul Sérusier — The Talisman, the Aven River at the Bois d'Amour
• Maurice Denis — Portrait of the Artist Aged Eighteen, Princess Maleine's Minuet or Marthe Playing the Piano, The Green Trees or Beech Trees in Kerduel, October Night (panel for the decoration of a girl's room)
• André Derain — Charing Cross Bridge, also known as Westminster Bridge
• James McNeill Whistler — Arrangement in Grey and Black: The Artist's Mother, also known as Whistler's Mother

[edit] Major sculptors

François Rude, Jules Cavelier, Auguste Rodin, Paul Gauguin, Camille Claudel and Honoré Daumier.

Thanks to the entry in Wikipedia on the Orsay Museum

The museum on the banks of the Seine River is shrouded in scaffolding and netting as experts paint it, rebuild corroded metal marquees and restore pollution-stained stonework.

The touchups on the facade are part of a broader renovation that will cost upward of $16 million. Instead of just cleaning up the stones, researchers have gone on a search for the building's roots.

For its opening in 1986, architects painted the building's metal accents in pale blue-green, giving the museum its unusual look — a mixture of imposing stone and delicate metalwork.

But recent laboratory tests showed that the metal accents were painted in beige and wood hues when the original train station opened in 1900. At that time, architects generally tried to hide the metalwork — viewed as functional, but not pretty — by painting it to blend in with the stone.

When the scaffolding comes down in May, the museum will have restored that lost color scheme.

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