Today we went to the Museé d’Orsay for an on site art history lecture by Professor Anne Catherine Abecassis. Anne Catherine situated us in this former train station, built for the Universal Exposition of 1900, at the advent of the electric engine. In the 1980’s the outdated rail station was converted into a museum and it now displays art works created between 1848 and 1914.
First, we walked upstairs for a look at an ornate, highly decorated waiting room that was very much in fashion when the train station was built. This room served as a visual reference point for the rest of our lecture. In order to better contextualize the revolutionary style the modern painters were adopting, we were asked to think about this room as a benchmark and indicator of poplar tastes for beauty and art at the beginning of the 20th century.
We started our tour on the right side of the museum’s nave to view paintings by Ingres and David, revered by the French Academy of Fine Art. During the 19th century, the Academy set and monitored notions of art and aesthetics, and appropriate subjects included biblical or classical themes.
On the opposite side of the Orsay, we viewed works by Courbet and Manet, characterizing a radical shift in style and subject matter, also created during the reign of the French Academy. Anne Catherine discussed Manet’s Olympia and Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe to elucidate the transformation that was taking place in painting.
Later in the lecture, we viewed the Impressionists Degas and Monet and the Neo-Impressionists Gauguin and Seurat. We have walked through a major transformation in fine arts; it was a morning filled with art history insights and masterpiece paintings.
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