^#smrgSAHAF Paintings in the Musée d'Orsay -

Genevieve Lacambre
Conservateur en chef au musee d'Orsay

Anne Distel
Conservateur au musee d'Orsay

Claire Freches-Thory
Conservateur au musee d'Orsay

Preface
by Françoise Cachin
Direcreur du musee d'Orsay

Preface
Françoise Cachin

Introduction
Michet Laclotle

Eclecticism and Realism
Genevteve Lacamhre

Impressionism
Claire Frèche-Thory, Anne Distel

Post-Impressionism
Claire Frèche-Thory

Naturalism and Symbolism
Geneviève Lacambre

After 1900 Claire Frèche-Thory
Index

The Musée d'Ofsay offers a broad panorama of late 19th and early 20th century art. In addition its programme of temporary exhibitions, concerts and audiovisual events lends itself to all forms of interdisciplinary encounters, stressing the complexity of an epoch which was incomparably rich in artistic experience and variety. To avoid confusion and surfeit, the planning of the museum's permanent exhibition rooms is clearly based on distinctions between techniques and modes of expression ; hence, it is easy enough to plan and describe a general tour of the museum, linking the various display rooms while identifying each in a separate way. The aim of this book is to define such a tour, and at the same time to offer a history of painting from about 1850 to the early years of our own century, as illustrated by the collections of the Musée d'Orsay.

Before we go into the history of these collections, we should perhaps explain the timespan covered by the museum's programmes. This time span is circumscribed by the Louvre on one side and the Musée National d'Art moderne on the other.