The Musée de l’Orangerie

The Musée de l’Orangerie, one of the most beautiful painting museums in Paris

• The Musée de l’Orangerie was once an orangery, a place where oranges were deposited to preserve them properly
• It is now a museum, devoted mainly to French painting between 1860 and 1930
• In our opinion, it is one of the most beautiful painting museums in Paris
• A fascinating little museum located in the Tuileries Gardens, on the esplanade above the Concorde
• We love this relatively unknown museum which has Monet’s spectacular Water Lilies and anexceptional collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works (French painting from the 1860s to the 1930s)
• In addition to the permanent collections, the Musée de l’Orangerie presents exhibitions that are often fascinating
• Currently, the museum is presenting a very beautiful exhibition dedicated to Modigliani and his dealer Paul Guillaume: “Amedeo Modigliani. Un peintre et son marchand “

The Water Lilies, spectacular and unique in the world

• Claude Monet, helped by Georges Clémenceau, chose the Musée de l’Orangerie to house the Water Lilies cycle, a cycle he had begun thirty years earlier
• This unique ensemble is one of the largest monumental achievements of painting in the first half of the twentieth century. This unique masterpiece has no equivalent in the world
• 2 rooms are specially designed to accommodate the 8 famous paintings by Claude Monet. They benefit from natural light from the glass roof and their east-west orientation symbolically places them in the course of the sun
• Monet wanted the visitor to be able to fully immerse themselves in the painting and forget about the outside world
• The first room brings together four compositions showing the reflections of the sky and the vegetation in the water, from morning to evening, while the second room brings together paintings with a contrasting effect by the branches of the willows bordering the water