Musée d'Orsay 2

I was in Paris a couple of weeks ago, for an interview. As I had a couple of hours to spare, I grabbed the opportunity to visit the Musée d'Orsay for the first time. Hmmm. The museum concentrates upon 19th century French art, and I found it interesting and illuminating rather than exciting.

Prior to touring the Musée d'Orsay, I thought that I had a very strong preference for Victorian representational art over all other types, but this visit started to change my mind. There was a special exhibition of Jules Bastien-Lepage's art, which disappointed me. His depiction of rural scenes was too accurate, too lifelike, too photo-like. And like photographs, some pictures looked as if they had been altered post hoc. Peasants' faces looked as if they had been painted after the rest of the composition, as if they had been beamed in from a different era, almost Photoshopped onto the rural scenery. Yes, the pictures were accurate, yes, they showed both the wonder and the hardship of country life with much less romanticism than the equivalent English paintings, but somehow they showed little soul. They made me realise how Impressionism could start as a reaction to the formalism of this dead representation; how less could start to be more, how painstaking accuracy could be supplanted by blobs and blends to give life to art.

Next visit to Paris, I'll try the Orangerie.