Musée d’Orsay’s ‘renaissance’ casts impressionism in spectacular new light

The French museum’s renovation has brought the grandeur of its 19th-century masterpieces back to life The grandeur hits you as soon as you walk in. On the austere, slate-grey wall of the Musée d’Orsay’s newly renovated impressionist gallery, Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’Herbe stops visitors in their tracks. The plump female nude at the heart of the canvas, who so scandalised 19th-century opinion in the Paris Salon, is recognisable, but there is something splendidly different about its new presentation. After Manet, there are the other crown jewels of impressionism: the Degas ballerinas, Monet’s poppies, Renoir’s Moulin Rouge dancers, Cézanne’s card players, and dozens more of the world’s best-known 19th-century French masterpieces. The colours leap out from the long, sombre walls. The museum’s president, Guy Cogéval, had spoken before its reopening of a “renaissance” of the Musée d’Orsay and its world-renowned collection, and promised to show the impressionists as we had never seen them before. The expert judgment, ahead of the public opening of the new-look museum on 20 October, is that he has been true to his word. It has taken almost €8m (£7m) to create this new gallery – part of a two-year renovation of the museum costing €20m – in which clever use of colour and illumination shows the works in an entirely new light. Gone are the cramped corridors, the dead ends, the white stone walls and floors and the glaring light from the massive glass canopy that forms a central avenue over the top-floor gallery in the Pavillon Amont, the west wing of the building. The new, subdued walls and floors, along with artificial lighting, have created what Cogéval describes as an “intimate”, almost homely, atmosphere in a gallery that he says is the “beating heart of the museum”. “These paintings were, after all, intended to be hung on walls in homes, not in a museum,” he says. With his gelled hair, slightly rumpled suit and unbridled enthusiasm, Cogéval, 55, an art historian who took over as president of the Musée d’Orsay in January 2008, has the appearance and air of an over-excited schoolboy. “Everyone said I couldn’t touch the museum when I arrived because it is a historic building and all that. But I have proved them wrong. I said we would do this, and we did,” he says, with undisguised glee. “The whole space has been transformed. It’s magnifique!” The 19th-century painters, working in an era before the electric light bulb became widespread, would doubtless have appreciated the modern tricks of artificial light employed to show their work to extraordinary effect. Developing artistic and scientific techniques to capture on canvas the way that light transformed landscapes and objects became an obsession among the impressionists. The focus was crucial to creating what they termed “optical realism”. Claude Monet said of impressionism, the movement he founded and led: “Light is the principal person in the picture.” To that end, he strove over and over again to encapsulate the way that light danced over the Thames at Westminster, the cathedral at Rouen, the water lilies on the pond at his home in Giverny, and the nearby haystacks – all at different times and in different weathers. Curator Xavier Rey, one of the team hanging the impressionist works in the new fifth-floor gallery, said that before the renovations the paintings had been lit solely by sunlight. “The new system of lighting has transformed everything. Now we have a combination of halogen and new-generation diode lights that reproduce the richness of sunlight, but directly light the paintings and reflect the colours and details. It really does mean the works are being seen in a new light, which was our intention.” He added: “Hanging the works on coloured walls is also closer to the way the impressionist paintings would have been displayed in their time.” As for the impressionists, the devil was in the detail and colour; Parisian architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte said his team had experimented with various shades of grey before coming up with the right one. “It took three or four goes,” said Wilmotte. “The grey paint, which is a specially made mix, changes colour depending on the light – sometimes it is green-grey, sometimes red-grey. It is a very special grey. It doesn’t have a name, but if pushed to give it one I would say gris vivant [living grey] because it changes with the light. The light gives a kind of visual comfort and the painting stands out against this grey. “We also tried to make the best use of the natural light by filtering it and using fractured glass that captures and diffuses the sunlight.” Cogéval admits that he was not convinced at first that profound grey was the right colour for the gallery, having expressed an initial preference for green. “It was this I hesitated over most. We tried it out in a small space like an apartment to see how it looked with different shades and different lighting. Now I see it is warm and elegant,” he said. “The deep colour means the impressionists’ palette can be seen like never before.” Since 2008 the Musée d’Orsay has been gradually abandoning the concept, popularised by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, of hanging paintings on white walls. “Outside 20th-century and contemporary art, white kills all paintings,” said Cogéval. “When you place an academic or impressionist painting on a white background, the light from the white creates an indeterminate halo around the work, preventing the sometimes subtle contrasts and details being revealed.” The opening of the new galleries – including a chain of renovated rooms housing post-impressionist works by Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cross, Seurat, the Douanier Rousseau and a stunning new café designed by Brazilian brothers Humberto and Fernando Campana – will mark the Musée d’Orsay’s 25th birthday. Built on the left bank of the Seine, opposite the Tuileries Gardens, the museum was originally a railway station built by Victor Laloux for the Orléans line and was inaugurated at the World’s Fair of 1900. At the station’s opening, painter Edouard Detaille said presciently: “The station is superb and looks like the Palais des Beaux Arts.” By 1939 it was already obsolete, its platforms too short for the new modern trains that appeared with the electrification of the railways. Today its impressionist and post-impressionist collection boasts 34 Manets, 86 Monets, 43 by Degas, 56 Cézannes, 46 Sisleys, 81 Renoirs, 24 Van Goghs and 24 Gauguins, among others, that help to pull in around three million visitors a year. Architect Dominique Brard, who also worked on the renovation, said it had taken months of long and hard negotiations to be allowed to change parts of the historic building. “It was complicated, very complicated. At times we were negotiating over small points. It took six to eight months of negotiations with the historic monuments people, but we got there in the end,” he told the Observer . “In the end, our role is to show the works of art at their very best, and this is what I believe we have done.” On the way out, one of the museum’s team of curators described how re-hanging the masterpieces had been “extremely exciting and emotional. It was as if we were seeing these paintings for the first time,” she said. “It was extraordinarily moving. We were all blown away.” Art Museums France Paris Europe Kim Willsher guardian.co.uk

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