Top 100 - Musée d'Orsay: masterpieces
Top 100 famous masterpieces from the Musée d'Orsay to see
From Manet, Monet and Degas to Van Gogh, Cézanne, Gauguin, Seurat and Matisse: one hundred paintings to explore Orsay without reducing the museum to the impressionists alone
Modernity arrives at the station
One hundred masterpieces, no trains to catch
Installed in the former Orsay station, the museum brings together the decades that separate Courbet's realistic revolution from the first abstractions. The journey is not limited to impressionism: academic painting, naturalism, symbolism, pont-aven School, Nabis and foreign perspectives allow us to understand the battles of the Salon as much as the inventions of color. These hundred works tell the story of their time through their models, their commissions, their scandals and the paths sometimes surprising which led them to the national collections.
Orsay brings together an era that saw cities, images and leisure accelerate. Fortunately, the paintings stay at the dock long enough for us to really look at them.Switch to images
Works in pictures
The most famous works open the route with blue nights, scandals, balls and a few looks that are impossible to dodge.
#1
Starry Night on the Rhône
Van Gogh painted the Rhône at Arles in September 1888, shortly after installing the Yellow House. The gas street lights are reflected in the water while the Big Dipper shines above a tiny couple. Presented to the Independents in 1889, the painting precedes the Starry Night of Saint-Rémy and already shows how the artist makes an observed landscape an emotional architecture of blue and gold.
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#2
Olympia
Olympia was exhibited at the Salon of 1865, two years after its creation. Victorine Meurent plays a Parisian courtesan receiving a bouquet from a client, served by Laure, while a black cat replaces the faithful dog of the Venus of Urbino. The public has difficulty supporting the mythological nude being brought back to contemporary commerce and supporting their gaze without the slightest vaporous excuse.
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#3
Lunch on the Grass
At the Salon des Refusés of 1863, Manet placed a naked woman among two men dressed during an outdoor lunch. The poses borrow from Raphael and the Venetian masters, but the models, clothes and basket belong to Paris modern. The break comes from this telescoping: the history of art is cited precisely, then deprived of the distance which made it comfortable.
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#4
Galette mill ball
In 1877, Renoir presented this great Montmartre festival painted in the garden of the Moulin de la Galette. His friends pose among the dancers, workers and regulars, under a light filtered by the trees. The impression of a snapshot rests on a rigorous organization of groups; the painting thus retains the warmth of a popular Sunday without losing the solidity of a collective portrait.
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#5
Arrangement in gray and black n° 1, portrait of the artist's mother
Whistler painted his mother Anna in 1871 in his London studio, after the initial model had missed the appointment. He titled the work Arrangement in gray and black in order to emphasize its harmonies rather than the family story. Acquired by the French state in 1891, this austere profile paradoxically became a universal icon of motherhood, well beyond the painter's formalist intentions.
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#6
The Origin of the World
Courbet created The Origin of the World in 1866 for the Ottoman diplomat Khalil-Bey, collector of erotic images. Long hidden behind curtains or other paintings, the work includes the psychoanalyst's collection Jacques Lacan before entering Orsay in 1995. Its radical framing excludes face and story, directly confronting painting, desire and identity of the model.
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#7
The Painter's Workshop
In the center of his Workshop, Courbet paints himself working on a landscape, surrounded on the left by the social world and on the right by friends, critics and patrons. Refused by the jury of the Universal Exhibition of 1855, this immense allegory real" is shown in its Pavilion of Realism. His workplace thus becomes the political and aesthetic assessment of seven years of career.
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#8
A funeral in Ornans
With A Funeral in Ornans, Courbet gives a provincial ceremony the dimensions reserved for ancient or religious history. The inhabitants of his hometown pose life-size around an open pit, without a central hero or idealization. Presented in 1850, this monumental equality shocked the Salon and became one of the manifestos of French realism.
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#9
Gleaners
Millet shows three women gleaning the ears left after the harvest, the right of subsistence granted to the poorest. At the Salon of 1857, their curved bodies and their scale worried certain critics still marked by revolutions social. The painter neither dramatizes nor sentimentalizes the work: he gives it a lasting presence in front of the luminous abundance of the harvests.
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#10
The Angelus
A peasant couple interrupts their task to pray to the sound of the Angelus. Millet worked on the stage between 1857 and 1859, then its immense diffusion through engraving made it a familiar image throughout Europe. Dalí would later suspect one child's coffin under the basket, a contested reading but revealing of the enigmatic power acquired by this minute of rural silence.
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#11
Parquet planers
The Planers were refused at the Salon of 1875 then presented with the Impressionists the following year. Caillebotte shows three workers stripping the parquet floor of a bourgeois apartment, their arms and tools responding to the long blades from the ground. The modern profession receives an anatomical study and a format hitherto reserved for noble subjects; realism enters the room by literally removing the varnish.
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#12
The Dance Class
Degas paints Jules Perrot leading a student, surrounded by dancers who wait, stretch or correct their outfit. Thanks to his connections at the Opera, he knows the daily side of ballet and prefers repetition to the triumph of the stage. The painting brings into the museum the discipline, fatigue and downtime necessary for a grace that previously seemed without work.
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#13
In a café, said L'Absinthe
In the café of New Athens, actress Ellen Andrée and engraver Marcellin Desboutin pose in front of a glass of absinthe. The cut tables, the murky mirror and the emptiness between them build a shared solitude. When the work shown in London in 1893, it provokes a moral debate on alcohol; Degas had mainly painted the possible distance between two people sitting almost side by side.
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#14
Poppies
Monet exhibited the Coquelicots during the first impressionist demonstration in 1874. Camille and their son Jean appeared twice on the Argenteuil slope, at the top then in the foreground, suggesting their progress. The red touches connect the stages of the walk and give the landscape a temporal measurement that is as simple as it is effective.
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#15
Saint-lazare Station
In 1877, Monet obtained permission to work in Saint-Lazare station and painted twelve views of its platforms and glass roofs. The steam from locomotives absorbs frames, passengers and light, transforming industry into atmosphere. Several versions were shown at the impressionist exhibition the same year: modernity no longer passes only in front of the painter, it enters his temporary studio noisily.
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#16
The Fifre
Manet painted a young musician from the Imperial Guard in 1866, probably inspired by Velazquez's Spanish fife. The boy stands out against an almost empty background, without ground or depth, like a life-size playing card. Refused through the Salon, the canvas affirms that a contemporary uniform and a flat painting can hold the format of the official portrait without requiring military decoration.
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#17
The Magpie
Painted near Étretat during the winter of 1868-1869, La Pie places a small bird on a barrier in the middle of a snowy landscape. Monet constructs white with blue, purple and yellow shadows, a solution that the Salon jury refused in 1869. The canvas has become one of his most famous winters: an immense silence, balanced by a few black paws.
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#18
Women in the garden
To paint this canvas of more than two meters in the open air, Monet digs a trench to lower the upper part as the work progresses. Camille poses for several of the four women, dressed in contemporary fashion. Refused at the Salon of 1867, however, the work made the white dress, shadows and the garden a monumental subject even before the official birth of impressionism.
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#19
The Balcony
The Balcony brings together Berthe Morisot, Fanny Claus and Antoine Guillemet behind a green balustrade. Manet takes a motif from Goya but replaces the expected conversation with three solitudes: each figure looks elsewhere. Presented at the Salon from 1869, the painting disconcerts with its frank contrasts and with this worldly scene where physical proximity produces no visible exchange.
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#20
The Church of Auvers-sur-Oise, seen from the apse
Van Gogh painted the church of Auvers in June 1890, a few weeks before his death. The Gothic building deforms under a deep blue sky, while two paths go around the apse and a woman walks away. The real monument becomes almost alive, unstable between shadow and light; the landscape of Île-de-France takes on the inner tension that the artist had previously given to Provençal nights.
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#21
Self-portrait
This self-portrait from September 1889 was painted at the Saint-Rémy asylum after another crisis. Van Gogh shows himself in a jacket, in front of a background of blue scrolls which seems to prolong the rhythms of his face. He sends the work to his brother Theo as proof of returning to work; the image affirms less a stable identity than a lucid effort to reconstruct oneself through painting.
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#22
Card Players
Cézanne produced five versions of The Card Players between 1890 and 1895, with farmers from the family property as models. The Canvas of Orsay reduces the scene to two silent men, a table and a bottle. Any anecdote from tavern disappears: bodies, hats and lowered gazes become weighed volumes, united in a part of which no decisive movement is shown.
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#23
Van Gogh's Room in Arles
Van Gogh painted three versions of his room at the Yellow House in Arles. That of Orsay, executed in 1889 in Saint-Rémy after the deterioration of the first canvas, takes up from memory the bed, the chairs, the portraits and the colored walls. There deliberately inclined perspective does not describe a simple interior: it reflects the desire for a calm refuge that life together with Gauguin has not managed to guarantee.
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#24
Apples and oranges
Apples and Oranges belongs to Cézanne's great late still lifes. The fruits, the tablecloth, the pitcher and the plates are arranged from several angles of view, at the price of a table whose geometry refuses to remain reasonable. The artist seeks less the illusion of a meal than the balance of masses and colors; this constructed instability will deeply nourish the Cubists.
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#25
Women of Tahiti
Painted shortly after Gauguin's arrival in Tahiti in 1891, two women are sitting on a beach, one in profile, the other facing the public. Their attitudes are calm but not offered, while pareos, sand and sea become simpler large colored areas. The work belongs to the artist's colonial and imaginary project, which must be read with the beauty of the painting and the power relations of its context.
View product →Boulevards, workshops, cafes, shows and nearby countryside tell the story of a society that is changing pace.
#26
The Birth of Venus
Cabanel presented The Birth of Venus at the Salon of 1863, where Napoleon III bought it for his collection. The goddess floats on the waves in a smooth pose, surrounded by putti, exactly the year the Luncheon on the Grass is rejected. THE academic success and modern scandal are therefore not two successive eras: Orsay allows us to see them born side by side.
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#27
Berthe Morisot with a bouquet of violets
Manet painted Berthe Morisot in 1872, shortly after the Commune, dressed in black and holding a small bouquet of violets. The light background and quick touch focus all attention on the dark eyes of the model. Painter recognized as much as muse of the Manet entourage, Morisot retains here an intellectual presence which resists purely romantic readings of their relationship.
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#28
The Argenteuil Bridge
In 1874, the Pont d'Argenteuil associated recent infrastructure with sailboats in a leisure basin. Pillars, masts and houses provide the framework, while the water fragments their reflections in small touches. Monet does not choose between industry and countryside: he paints the modern suburbs at a time when railways, promenades and navigation share the same horizon.
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#29
London, Parliament. Hole of sun in the fog
From Saint-Thomas hospital, Monet observed the London Parliament between 1899 and 1901 in the fog of the Thames, then took up the paintings in Giverny. In this version, a gap of sunlight passes through the mist and almost dissolves architecture. The political building becomes a meteorological event; its famous silhouette only exists to the rhythm of light.
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#30
Rue Montorgueil, in Paris. Festival of June 30, 1878
On June 30, 1878, rue Montorgueil was covered with flags for a party linked to the Universal Exhibition. Monet paints the scene from a window, transforming crowd and tricolor into continuous movement between the facades. Without command official nor portraits of dignitaries, the painting captures the celebration as an urban phenomenon, when the street itself becomes the main organizer of the image.
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#31
Woman with umbrella facing right
In 1886, Monet had Suzanne Hoschedé pose on an island in the Seine in Giverny and painted two almost twin views, turned right then left. The figure serves as a fixed point while veil, dress, grass and clouds record the wind. Presented together, the paintings do not form two portraits but an experience of variation around a silhouette in the air.
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#32
Woman with umbrella turned left
This second Woman with a Umbrella reverses the orientation of Suzanne Hoschedé and modifies the sky, the shadows and the inclination of the grass. Monet thus took up in 1886 the principle of the Promenade painted eleven years earlier with Camille, who died in 1879. The pair unites family memory and serial research: a familiar gesture returns, but the person and the light have changed.
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#33
Regattas in Argenteuil
The Argenteuil regattas offer Monet a motif where boats, houses and reflections share the brilliance of the Seine. Painted around 1872, the canvas precedes the public affirmation of the impressionist group but already has the moving touch. THE new nautical leisure activity, made accessible by train, is becoming a modern landscape rather than a simple sporting scene.
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#34
The Red Roofs, village corner, winter effect
In Pontoise in 1877, Pissarro frames a village between bare trunks and winter fields. The red roofs appear in fragments, nested in the relief instead of forming a panorama. Shown in the third exhibition impressionist, the work affirms the value of ordinary rural architecture and reveals the painter's fruitful exchanges with Cézanne.
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#35
The Flood in Port Marly
The flood of 1876 transformed Port-Marly into a lakeside village. Sisley places the wine merchant's house in the center, while road, facades and sky are reflected in almost calm water. He paints several states of the flood; rather a spectacular disaster, this version shows a daily life temporarily reorganized by boats.
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#36
The swing
In the garden on rue Cortot, Renoir painted a young woman near a swing in 1876, surrounded by friends and a child. The stage shares decor and models with the Moulin de la Galette, but narrows the party into uncertain conversation. The sun spots on the dress and the floor become the real movement of the painting.
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#37
Dancing in the city
Danse à la ville belongs to a trio commissioned by Paul Durand-Ruel in 1883. Suzanne Valadon and Paul Lhote evolve in a worldly interior, united by the elegant vertical of the white dress. Opposite Country Dance, freer, the work shows how the same ball gesture changes depending on the location, costume and social rules.
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#38
Country dancing
For Danse à la campagne, Aline Charigot and Paul Lhote pose on a terrace animated by fallen hats and glasses. The red dress, the smile and the circular movement oppose a spontaneous warmth to the restraint of Danse à la ville. Renoir does not only paint two dances: he compares two social ways of inhabiting proximity.
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#39
Young girls at the piano
In 1891, the State commissioned an image from Renoir for the Luxembourg Museum. After several studies and versions, Young Girls at the Piano was accepted in 1892 and marked its official recognition. The two teenagers, one playing and the other reading allows the painter to combine rediscovered drawing, supple color and bourgeois intimacy.
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#40
The Cat Boy
Around 1868, Renoir painted a naked young man holding a cat against his shoulder. The model remains unknown and the absence of a mythological story makes male nudity unusual for the time. Body, animal and curtain construct a study intimate, long less famous than the painter's female portraits but essential for understanding the freedom of his beginnings.
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#41
The Bellelli Family
Degas begins the Bellelli Family during a stay in Florence with his aunt Laura, her husband Gennaro and their daughters. The looks, furniture and body positions reveal a marital tension that the large format does not don't try to solve. Completed over several years, this family scene unites ambition for a historical portrait and almost merciless psychological observation.
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#42
The Opera Orchestra
In the foreground, Degas paints his bassoonist friend Désiré Dihau and the Opera musicians; the dancers are cut above them by the edge of the stage. Around 1870, this inversion gives faces to those that the public hears usually without looking at them. The orchestra becomes a collective portrait, while the ballet is nothing more than a frieze of luminous legs.
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#43
The Foyer de la danse at the Opera on rue Le Peletier
The foyer on rue Le Peletier is shown as a workplace: ballerinas at the helm, master standing and groups waiting. Degas knows precisely the old Opera House, destroyed by fire in 1873, but freely rebuilt each scene. The oblique depth gives space to the rehearsals and pauses that precede the public performance.
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#44
The Racecourse. Amateur jockeys near a car
Degas followed racing from the 1860s, attracted by horses, speed and pre-departure attitudes. Here, amateur jockeys and car are arranged on open ground where the action still seems suspended. The artist avoids it heroic moment of victory; the waiting, the preparations and the fragmentation of the group offer it a more complex modernity.
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#45
The Cradle
Berthe Morisot shows her sister Edma watching over her daughter Blanche behind a cradle veil. Exhibited in 1874 with the Impressionists, this maternity escape sentimentalism through the geometry of the arms, the curtain and the looks. THE tableau maintains the silent attention of a daily gesture and the fine distance necessary to protect sleep.
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#46
Young woman in ball gown
Morisot painted a young woman dressed for the ball in 1879, but retains the moment before or after the evening rather than the brilliance of the room. Flowers, fan, dress and background come together in a light touch that leaves certain areas open. The worldly portrait thus becomes an experience of fragile presence, far from the certainties of official costume.
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#47
The Rue Royale Circle
In 1868, James Tissot brought together twelve members of the Cercle de la rue Royale on the balcony of their Parisian club. Each aristocrat or grand bourgeois is identifiable, notably the young prince of Polignac. This collective order works like a social photograph before its time: clothes, postures and distances indicate a hierarchy that common elegance is not enough to abolish.
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#48
A lodge for Italians
Student and model of Manet, Eva Gonzalès painted a woman in a dressing room at the Théâtre-Italien in 1874. His sister Jeanne poses in front of a bouquet, binoculars and a mirror which extends the room. The work dialogues with the boxes of Renoir and Cassatt, but affirms a feminine vision of the spectacle where the model occupies public space without becoming a simple accessory to the male audience.
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#49
Roofs under the snow, Paris
From a high floor, Caillebotte painted the roofs of Paris covered in snow in 1878. Fireplaces, walls and gray sky compose a silent geometry, almost devoid of passers-by. After the lively Rainy Time street, this view suspends Haussmannian activity and reveals the city through its surfaces least intended to be looked at.
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#50
White jelly
Pissarro painted a frosty morning in Pontoise in 1873. A peasant walks on a hardened path, between whitewashed fields and distant houses, under cold light. Presented in 1874, the work was ironically compared to scraped paint ; its rough material nevertheless corresponds to the terrain and the effort of the person crossing it.
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#51
The Wounded Man
Courbet begins The Wounded Man as a self-portrait in love around 1844, then modifies it after a breakup: the woman disappears and a bloody wound appears on the chest. Dated retrospectively from 1844, the painting therefore preserves several lives beneath its surface. The young painter's romanticism becomes a reworked autobiography, where personal history is corrected directly with a brush.
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#52
Trout
Courbet painted La Trouite in 1872 after his imprisonment for his role during the Commune. The fish caught on the hook, still alive and covered in blood, bears a signature accompanied by the Latin word "in vinculis", in the chains. This still Life is read as a symbolic self-portrait: resistance, capture and suffocation united in the dark current of a river.
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#53
The Source
Ingres began La Source in Florence around 1820 and did not complete it until 1856, with a workshop assistant for the decor. A young woman holds a jar whose water flows in front of her frontal body, mixing an antique nude and allegory. Entrance to Orsay with the national collection, the work summarizes an ideal line pursued for more than three decades.
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#54
The Birth of Venus
Bouguereau presents his Birth of Venus at the Salon of 1879. The goddess stands on a shell surrounded by newts, nymphs and loves, in an anatomical and pearly virtuosity which extends Raphaël as much as Cabanel. Very admired then long despised by modernist history, the canvas today allows us to understand what the academic public expected from the great painted spectacle.
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#55
A cockfight
Gérôme exhibited A Cockfight at the Salon of 1847, where young Greeks witnessed the duel of two animals. The archeology, the idealized bodies and the precision of the decor earned him early success. Under the ancient appearance, the scene plays with it desire, rivalry and outlook; the great story gives way to a carefully costumed domestic episode.
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#56
The Romans of decadence
In 1847, Thomas Couture presented a Roman orgy dominated by exhausted guests, under the gaze of ancient statues and disillusioned philosophers. The subject moralizes the decadence of Rome but also targets the French society of the monarchy from July. The triumph at the Salon confirms that political criticism sometimes passes more easily when it wears a toga.
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#57
Rolla
Rolla, inspired by a poem by Alfred de Musset, shows the young man contemplating Marie asleep after a purchased night, before her suicide. The Salon of 1878 removed the work for indecency, despite the absence of an explicit sexual scene. Dress pier, corset and morning light tell the story of Parisian prostitution through its material traces, which makes it more contemporary than the tolerated academic nude.
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#58
Cain
In 1880, Cormon exposed the exile of Cain, condemned to wander with his tribe after the murder of Abel. He transposes the biblical story into an imagined prehistory, populated by exhausted bodies, children and animals. The monumental march reflects the 19th century interest in human origins and gave the criminal an entire community to draw into his punishment.
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#59
The dream
Conscripts sleeping in tents dream of the victorious armies of the Revolution and the Empire. Detaille painted this patriotic vision in 1888 after the defeat of 1870, at a time when revenge occupied the national imagination. THE military ghosts cross the sky like a promise; glorious history becomes the collective dream of a new army.
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#60
1814, the French Campaign
Meissonier represented Napoleon and his staff during the French campaign of 1814, under heavy skies and on a muddy road. The emperor is no longer the resounding winner: bent over his white horse, he advances among officers tired. Presented in 1864, the painting condenses military failure into miniature precision applied to a great national myth.
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#61
The Excommunication of Robert the Pious
Jean-Paul Laurens paints Robert the Pious and Constance of Arles alone in a church after their excommunication for forbidden marriage. The extinguished candles, the scepter on the ground and the servants who move away materialize the isolation of the couple. At the Salon of 1875, medieval history became a psychological scene about the political force of a religious ritual.
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#62
Harvester Pay
Lhermitte shows agricultural workers receiving their wages at the end of the day, under the authority of the manager. Presented in 1882, the canvas precisely observes faces, clothes and gestures without transforming the countryside into decor idyllic. Payment constitutes the narrative center: rural work appears as an economic relationship as much as a cycle of the seasons.
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#63
The hay
In Les Foins, an exhausted peasant woman sits with a blank stare, while a man sleeps behind her. Bastien-Lepage presented the work at the Salon of 1878 and combined naturalistic detail, the outdoors and almost photographic framing. Rest has not nothing pastoral: it measures the fatigue left by the day in the bodies.
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#64
Nivernais plowing
Rosa Bonheur received a state commission in 1848 to represent plowing in Nivernais. Twelve oxen advance in pairs, guided by the peasants, in autumn land rendered with powerful precision. Exhibited in 1849, the tableau devotes an artist who directly studies anatomy and animal work, on a scale reserved for large historical scenes.
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#65
The Poor Fisherman
A fisherman stands in a boat, head bowed, while a woman and a child remain on the shore. At the Salon of 1881, the simplification of forms and the silent poverty of the subject disconcerted the public. Puvis de Chavannes gives this family an almost sacred stillness; the work, first attacked, becomes a major source for the symbolists.
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#66
Young Girls by the sea
Three young women occupy a shore reduced to a few strips of sky, sea and land. Puvis painted separate attitudes in 1879, without explicit history or picturesque detail. This economy gives the scene the temporality of one ancient fresco; the painting will influence the Nabis with its calm surface and its refusal of spectacular naturalism.
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#67
Orpheus
A young Thracian holds Orpheus' head on her lyre, after his murder by the Maenads. Moreau exhibited the painting at the Salon of 1866 and transformed the horror into a meditative encounter between the young woman and the poet's face. Rocks, turtles and precious details enrich the myth with a symbolism where art physically survives the person who produced it.
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#68
Galatea
Galatea appears naked in a sea cave, observed by the cyclops Polyphemus whose eye emerges among the rocks. Around 1880, Moreau contrasted the almost unreal whiteness of the nymph with the dark and mineral world of the giant. Desire mythological becomes a decorative and disturbing vision, made of corals, flowers and looks that never meet.
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#69
The war
Rousseau presented The War on the Independents in 1894, after a long interruption in his participation. An armed horsewoman crosses a landscape covered in bodies, crows and broken trees. Inspired by recent conflicts and popular images, allegory abandons all military glory; his black horse gallops above a world that war has already emptied.
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#70
The Snake Charmer
Commissioned by Berthe Delaunay, The Snake Charm is painted in 1907. A dark flautist stands out in front of the moon, surrounded by snakes, birds and vegetation invented from Paris. Rousseau never visited the jungle he described; this distance allows him to make a mental landscape, more musical than documentary.
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#71
The Talisman, the Aven at Bois d'Amour
In 1888, Gauguin invited Paul Sérusier to paint Bois d'Amour according to the colors felt rather than copied. Made on a small panel, The Talisman becomes proof for future Nabis that a landscape can survive in the form of yellow, green, orange and blue spots. Pont-Aven's improvised lesson thus obtains an influence much greater than its dimensions.
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#72
Arearea
Arearea belongs to Gauguin's first Tahitian stay. Two women occupy the foreground, near a red dog, while a group worships an invented statue at the back. The title means joy or entertainment, but the scene combines observation, memories and fabricated mythology; the image of Tahiti offered to the Parisian public is already a personal and colonial construction.
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#73
The Beautiful Angela
Gauguin painted Marie-Angélique Satre, an innkeeper from Pont-Aven nicknamed Belle Angèle, in 1889 in a circular frame close to a Japanese print. The Breton headdress dialogues with a Peruvian statuette, bringing together cultures distant in the portrait. The model hates the result, proof that an innovative work is not always the best way to thank its hostess.
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#74
The White Horse
The White Horse was painted in Tahiti in 1898, although the animal appeared green under the reflections of the vegetation. Two naked riders move away among the trees and water, in a landscape built by curves and flat areas. The pharmacist who had ordered the painting refuses it precisely because the horse is not white; Gauguin loses the sale but retains an excellent example of non-descriptive color.
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#75
Portrait of the artist with the yellow Christ
Gauguin represents himself between two of his works: the Yellow Christ and an anthropomorphic pot. Painted around 1890-1891, the self-portrait brings together the martyr, the creator and the grotesque figure as three sides of his identity. At the moment he preparing his departure for Tahiti, the artist thus creates his own legend as a misunderstood painter, with a seriousness which he himself ensures the staging.
View product →Gauguin, Van Gogh, Bonnard and others moved painting toward memory, sensation, and formal invention.
#76
Portrait of Eugene Boch
In Arles in 1888, Van Gogh painted Eugène Boch, a Belgian artist he met in the entourage of the Yellow House. He wishes to paint a portrait of a poet and places his light face in front of a deep blue starry sky. Intended to complete one a gallery of artist friends, the work combines resemblance and symbolic role, as if the dream community could already exist on the walls.
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#77
Fritillaries imperial crown in a copper vase
Van Gogh painted these fritillaries in Paris in 1887, shortly after his contact with the Impressionists and Japanese prints. Orange flowers spring from a copper vase on a blue background, contrasting complementary colors with one new intensity. Still life becomes a rapid testing ground before the landscapes of Arles.
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#78
La Méridienne, known as La Sieste
In Saint-Rémy, Van Gogh copied an engraving after Millet in 1889-1890 showing two peasants sleeping near a millstone. He transposes black and white into yellows, blues and purples, without seeking a servile reproduction. The Nap pays homage to the painter of the rural world while giving the scene the Provençal warmth and the personal rhythm of Van Gogh's touch.
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#79
Portrait of Doctor Gachet
Van Gogh painted Doctor Paul Gachet in Auvers in June 1890, describing a man as nervous and melancholy as him. The foxglove placed on the table recalls his profession, while the head resting on the hand takes up an old one posture of sadness. Orsay's version remained in the Gachet family before his donation to the State; the doctor becomes the melancholy guardian of the painter's last weeks.
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#80
L'Arlésienne, Madame Ginoux
Marie Ginoux, patroness of the Café de la Gare in Arles, posed in November 1888 for Van Gogh and Gauguin. In Orsay's version, she leans on a table next to books, isolated by large yellow and pink areas. The portrait goes beyond the regional type of Arlésienne: fatigue, dignity and inner life appear in a pose of apparent simplicity.
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#81
The Woman with the Coffee Maker
The Woman with the Coffee Maker probably represents an employee of Cézanne's family property. Sitting frontally, it is built in large volumes which respond to the cylindrical coffee maker and the door behind it. Towards 1890-1895, the portrait transforms a modest interior into monumental balance; no one smiles, but each shape holds its place firmly.
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#82
The Gulf of Marseille seen from L'Estaque
From L'Estaque, Cézanne looks out over the bay of Marseille through pine trees. Sea, hills and houses are built by colorful plans rather than a continuous aerial perspective. Painted around 1878-1879, this view marks its distance from the impressionist touch and announces the research on volumes which will fascinate Braque and Picasso.
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#83
Still life with onions
In this late still life, Cézanne places onions, bottle, plate, knife and fabric on a deliberately unstable table. Objects are seen from slightly different angles, as if the eye had moved during observation. The painter gives familiar vegetables an architectural presence; the humble onion enters the museum without needing to disguise itself as a mythological pomegranate.
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#84
The Hanged Man's House, Auvers-sur-Oise
The Hanged Man's House was painted in Auvers-sur-Oise in 1873, when Cézanne worked with Pissarro. Presented at the first impressionist exhibition, she found a buyer despite criticism. The rising road, the thick walls and the absence of characters gives the village a particular density; under the light touch already appears a more heavy and personal construction.
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#85
The Circus
The Circus remained unfinished when Seurat died in 1891. The rider, horse and acrobat were driven by calculated curves and diagonals, while the spectators formed almost immobile rows. The divided method face a quick subject here: scientific color must follow the number without losing its balance.
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#86
The Poseuses
Seurat painted Les Poseuses between 1886 and 1888 in response to criticism that his method could not make the body human. Three nudes, in reality different poses of the same model, stand in the workshop in front of the Grande Jatte visible on the wall. The work depicts its own production and confronts the slow pointillist construction with the academic tradition of the model.
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#87
Women at the well
In Saint-Tropez in 1892, Signac depicts two women drawing water from a Mediterranean landscape. Daily gestures take on a decorative dimension thanks to separate touches and light colors. The work transposes the neo-impressionism outside the Parisian suburbs and combines work, southern light and the ideal of a harmonious life.
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#88
The Château des Papes in Avignon
Signac painted the Palais des Papes in Avignon in 1900 from the other bank of the Rhône. The Gothic mass and the bridge are recomposed in pink, orange, blue and yellow touches, according to a division that has become wider than at Seurat. The monument medieval ceases to be gray: it becomes a solar apparition whose colors the water extends.
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#89
The bed
Two women are lying in bed, seen up close under warm blankets. Toulouse-Lautrec frequents brothels and draws moments of rest, waiting or tenderness far from the male spectacle. Around 1892, Le Lit gave to this intimacy a simplicity without anecdote; sleeping bodies share a space that the audience was not supposed to occupy.
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#90
Dance at the Moulin Rouge
Toulouse-Lautrec painted Valentin le Désossé in 1890 teaching a dancer a step at the Moulin-Rouge, surrounded by identifiable regulars. The empty parquet floor accentuates the movement while the spectators form a social border. Before his famous posters, the work already establishes the cabaret as a modern stage where dance, fame and public observation are created together.
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#91
The White Cat
Bonnard painted a white cat in 1894 with a disproportionately arched body, elongated legs and a tiny head. Numerous preparatory drawings show that he is precisely looking for this comic distortion. The animal appears both familiar and heraldry, his gait transformed into an arabesque; the Nabi proves that a very serious study can perfectly lead to a deliberately improbable cat.
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#92
Tribute to Cézanne
In 1900, Maurice Denis brought together artists and critics of the Nabi circle around Cézanne's still life: Redon, Vuillard, Bonnard, Roussel, Sérusier and others. Cézanne's painting almost becomes a relic at the center of a tribute collective. This secular ceremony documents the transition from one generation to the next and the now founding place given to the master of Aix.
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#93
The Muses
In 1893, the Muses transposed the ancient goddesses into an undergrowth inspired by the park of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Women dressed in contemporary dresses are distributed flat between the vertical trunks, without naturalistic depth. Commissioned as decoration, the work affirms the Nabi principle that surface area and rhythm matter as much as the story told.
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#94
Eyes closed
Around 1890 Redon painted a face with lowered eyelids floating in an indeterminate space. Inspired by his wife Camille, the figure evokes sleep, meditation or inner appearance. After years dedicated to black people, the artist introduce here a very restrained color; the visible world fades just enough to let thought occupy the painting.
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#95
The Apollo Tank
The Char d'Apollo returns several times in Redon's late work, inspired in particular by Delacroix. The sun god leads his horses into the middle of a cloud of colors, confronting the forces of shadow without stable decoration. Vers 1912, pastel and oil completely free vision: myth serves as a vehicle for color, which is already a considerable mission for a tank.
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#96
Luxury, calm and voluptuousness
In Saint-Tropez in 1904, Matisse painted a scene of bathers by applying Signac's divided touch but enlarging the colored units. The title comes from Baudelaire, and the Mediterranean landscape becomes a promise of harmony. Presented in 1905, the work prepares for Fauvism: color begins to leave optical observation to assume a more musical freedom.
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#97
Mill in sunlight
Mondrian painted this mill in 1908 under a sun which dissolved bricks, wings and sky in red, yellow and blue. The traditional Dutch pattern received an almost tawny intensity, well before the neoplastic grilles that would make it famous. Orsay's work allows us to see the moment when the real landscape begins to become an autonomous structure of color.
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#98
Summer night
Winslow Homer painted Summer Night in Prout's Neck, Maine, in 1890. Two women dance by the sea under the moon, while seated figures watch white waves hit the rocks. Acquired by the French state after its success at the Universal Exhibition, the painting brings to Orsay an American vision where nocturnal leisure and the power of the ocean remain closely linked.
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#99
The Wheel of Fortune
Burne-Jones painted between 1875 and 1883 an impassive Fortune turning its wheel, to which king, slave and poet are attached. All become equal before the mechanical movement of destiny, whatever their condition. The bodies inspired by Michelangelo and the cold palette give this Pre-Raphaelite allegory a monumentality as beautiful as it is uncomfortable.
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#100
The Carmencita
Sargent painted the Spanish dancer Carmen Dauset Moreno, known as La Carmencita, then famous in New York in 1890. Her yellow and white dress, her raised arms and her direct gaze concentrate the energy of a performance without showing the audience. Presented at the Salon du Champ-de-Mars, the painting joins the French collections and closes this Orsay journey with a stage artist who fully supports her own show.
View product →What the works reveal
One hundred works, three faces from the 19th century
After a hundred paintings, Orsay appears as the museum of a world caught between horse and locomotive, academicism and avant-garde, ball gown and overalls. Modernity does not walk in a straight line; she prefers to change platforms at the last moment.
The present becomes historical
A train station, a dancer or an ordinary lunch acquire the gravity once reserved for myths and kings.
Light becomes a method
It no longer just illuminates shapes: it organizes color, time and sensation.
The museum brings together disagreements
Realism, impressionism, academicism and symbolism contradict each other, which makes the visit much more interesting.
Timeline on track
Five dates to join Orsay
The period covered by the collections begins at a time when art, politics and society are entering a phase of profound transformation.
The Salon des Refusés exposes the tensions between the institution and artists who seek other subjects and other forms.
Monet, Degas, Renoir, Morisot and their friends organized the first impressionist exhibition.
Orsay station opens for the Universal Exhibition, with its clocks and its large metal nave.
The old transformed station opened as a museum dedicated to the arts from 1848 to 1914.
The museum in depth
How to read this Top 100 from the Musée d'Orsay?
The Musée d'Orsay mainly covers the arts from 1848 to 1914. This period is not limited to impressionism: the galleries compare the realism of Courbet, the academicism of Cabanel and Bouguereau, the naturalism of Bastien-Lepage, the symbolism of Moreau and Redon, the Nabis, neo-impressionism and great foreign schools.
Fame remains the first criterion at the top of the ranking. Olympia, Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe, the Bal du moulin de la Galette or La Nuit étoilée sur le Rhône are world landmarks. But a visit built solely around these icons would remove the historical richness of the museum; the following ranks therefore also serve variety.
All entrances are oil paintings, including when the support is wood or cardboard. This choice deliberately excludes the major pastels of Degas and Redon, which deserve a separate tour, as well as graphic works, photography and sculpture.
The classification is not a seating plan. Hanging, loans and restorations may modify the presentation; you must check the official museum website before the visit. Rank mainly helps to establish priorities and recognize large stylistic ensembles.
Commercial reproductions and museum works are two separate objects.
Four visit keys
Watch before the clock rushes you
Modern subject, light, framing and material allow us to understand why Orsay's works seem both close and radically new. The 19th century already had a lot to do; he still found the time to reinvent painting.
Look for the present
Work, leisure, transportation and urban life show how artists define their own era.
Identify the moment
Colorful shadows, reflections and atmospheres give an hour and a temperature to the scene.
Observe the cuts
Japanese photography and prints encourage off-center, close-up or deliberately abrupt compositions.
Read the surface
Visible touch, flat areas, pastel and impasto remind us that modernity is also at stake in manufacturing.
Route connections
Continue after the last clock
Museum notices, artists, collections and sources extend the visit with verifiable markers. No composted tickets are necessary, which already constitutes appreciable progress.
Frequently asked questions
Orsay without a race against time
The essential answers to understand the collections, choose the major works and prepare a visit that leaves a little room for the eye.
Does this classification only contain works from the Musée d'Orsay?
Yes.
Why is there no sculpture or photography?
The perimeter is deliberately pictorial. Orsay has masterpieces in these areas, but mixing them would make the classification less coherent and prevent comparing works of the same nature.
Are Degas pastels included?
No. the body of work is limited to oil painting. Pastels, drawings, monotypes and graphic techniques are reserved for dedicated classifications.
How were the hundred works classified?
The top twenty-five places favor international fame and influence. The rest balances historical importance, quality, diversity of schools and interest in a real visit.
Why doesn't impressionism occupy the entire ranking?
Because Orsay also preserves major realistic, academic, naturalist, symbolist, post-impressionist and foreign ensembles. The ranking seeks to show this complete museum.
Does the article contain a slideshow?
No. The hundred works are displayed directly in a continuous editorial list, on computer and mobile.
Have product images and links been checked?
Yes.
Should the hanging be checked before the visit?
Yes. A work can be loaned, restored or temporarily removed. The official website of the Musée d'Orsay remains the reference for today's presentation.
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