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I followed my late parents’ art-laden footsteps through the best Impressionist museums in Paris. Here’s my guide to the top places to see.
Best Impressionist Museums in Paris
When Impressionism bloomed into a full scale art movement around 1874, it was as fresh as wisteria in spring, as gritty as an absinthe bar in Montmartre, and little understood.
A century and a half later we can’t imagine art history without it, and there is no easier place to explore it than at the top Impressionist museums in Paris.
Some, like the Musée d’Orsay are packed full of masterpieces. Others, like the Musée Fournaise – on the irresistibly-named Island of the Impressionists – are smaller but enriched by their surroundings.
All have unique things to offer.
A Legacy of Art
For me, Impressionism holds a special significance.
Back in the 1950s when my young artist parents, William Perehudoff and Dorothy Knowles, eloped to Paris they spent several weeks exploring France’s artistic legacy, and I’ve spent a lot of time doing the same.
The Impressionists’ Influence
My mother was devoted to painting the Canadian landscape, primarily Saskatchewan, and it gained her the Royal Order of Canada. (To be fair, my father, an abstract artist, had one, too.)
She was especially influenced by the Impressionists, sharing their love for light, nature and the immediacy of painting outside.
Maybe, having lost my mother a year ago, I’m not just walking in the footsteps of the Impressionists on this trip, I’m walking in hers.
And why not? Exploring Paris through its museums is a spectacular way to explore French culture and regions. Here is the best way to do it.
Unveiling the Best of Impressionism in Paris
Musée de l’Orangerie: Monet’s Masterpiece on Display
If you could distil Impressionism down into one perfect moment, you’d end up with something very much like the Musée de l’Orangerie, and that’s where I chose to start my latest Impressionist tour.
Set in the Tuileries Garden, the Orangerie Museum is a bite-size morsel of beauty, home to a prime selection of Monet’s monumental Water Lilies cycle, the Nymphéas.
Capturing the elusive surface of water was a preoccupation of Monet’s, and these expansive works, made during the latter part of his career, are a floaty liquid vision of pastel colours, reflections and light.
A Gift From Monet
Donated by Claude Monet himself, the Nymphéas evoke the serenity of his garden in Giverny and showcase the mastery with which he interprets it.
So much of Paris has changed over the last century, but the Musée de l’Orangerie has featured the Nymphéas since 1927, and I like to think I’m standing where my mother did, perhaps the seeds of her own water lily series in the 1980s taking root even then.
🇫🇷 Travel Tips for the Orangerie Museum
- Address: Tuileries Garden, Place de la Concorde (Seine side) 75001 Paris.
- Visit the Orangerie website for more info.
- Book a reserved entry ticket to the Musée de l’Orangerie here.
Musée d’Orsay: A Visual Feast
The next morning, after joining a group of journalists from Japan and the USA, I geared up for a tour of the most famous Impressionist museum in Paris, the incomparable Musée d’Orsay.
Originally a train station – and a grand Beaux-Arts one at that – the Musée d’Orsay in the 7th arrondissement became a museum in 1986. Today it houses the largest collection of Impressionist art in the world.
It’s such a glorious gathering of Monets, Manets and Morisots you could easily imagine you’re dancing alongside them (granted, I have a vivid imagination) at the Moulin de la Galette, an outdoor dance hall immortalized by Renoir.
Young Artists in Paris
As I stood transfixed by Renoir’s brushy strokes that captured the social whirl and sun-dappled revellers in Montmartre, I wondered how these paintings shaped my parents’ early careers.
Depression-era children, they were raised on farms in Saskatchewan, far from the excitement of Paris. Yet they had creative ambitions from the start.
My father, who’d had to drop out of school to work the fields, somehow scraped enough money together to study at the Colorado Springs School of Fine Art with the French muralist Jean Charlot.
He then went to New York and studied with Amédée Ozenfant who, together with Le Corbusier, had founded Purism, a style similar to Cubism but with the decorative elements stripped away.
By the time my father returned to Canada, my mother was in London studying at Goldsmiths College of Art.
A man who knew his own mind, he followed her to England, convinced her to marry him in Paris, and that’s where their life together began.
A Prime Museum on the Seine
Back in my parents’ day, many of the paintings at the Musée d’Orsay were housed in the Jeu de Paume, now a centre for photography. But with the Orsay’s Seine-side location, signature train station clock and airy grand hall, I can’t think of a better backdrop for Impressionist work.
🇫🇷 Travel Tips for the Musée d’Orsay
- Address: Esplanade Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, 75007 Paris.
- Check the Orsay website for times, prices and exhibitions.
- Getting there: By RER: line C, Musée d’Orsay Station.
- Book a Timed Entry Ticket to the Musée d’Orsay here.
Check out these great celebrations for the 150th Anniversary of Impressionism in France.
Musée Marmottan Monet: A Hidden Gem
One museum that was open during my parents’ time is the Musée Marmottan Monet, an empire-style townhouse in the wealthy 16th arrondissement.
It seems ironic that the building was donated to the Académie des Beaux-Arts by the influential art collector Paul Marmottan, because he despised Impressionism.
One does not draw, one sketches; one does not paint, one brushes. . . . This slackening comes above all from extreme ignorance or the indulgence of art lovers, who are happy to look merely for the impression.
Paul Marmottan
Today it’s one of the finest Impressionist museums in Paris and holds the world’s largest collection of works by Claude Monet.
This includes Monet’s seminal canvas Impression, Sunrise, which gave the Impressionist movement its name.
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Berthe Morisot at the Marmottan
A visit to the Musée Marmottan is also a prime occasion to get to know the work of Berthe Morisot, one of the few famous female Impressionist artists.
Morisot’s work is an invitation to enter a more private side of the era, a feminine world of intimate domestic scenes, leisure pursuits, and fashionable women.
Born into an affluent family, Morisot was interested in art at an early age and became great friends with Édouard Manet, who painted her often. (She also married his brother Eugène.)
A Founding Member of Impressionism
The only female included in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874, Morisot was a pioneering figure in the movement.
Her brushstrokes (so delicious – the best remind me of feathers) are breezy, quick and sure. Her palette is luminous and her compositions fresh and unpolished. The goal, she said, is to “capture something that passes.”
Forging a Path
I can’t help feeling a connection. Like my mother, Morisot was respected in a male-fuelled art world without sacrificing her individual perspective.
Even for my mother in the 50s and 60s – especially as a landscape painter when the male-heavy genre of abstract art held sway – it took some quiet determination.
There is no question that strong female artists like Morisot helped pave the way.
🇫🇷 Travel Tips for the Marmottan Monet Museum
- Marmottan Museum is at 2, rue Louis-Boilly, 75016 Paris
- Note: Impression, Sunrise is on tour until January 2025.
- Book a guided tour to the Museum Marmottan Monet with a Skip-the-Line ticket.
Montmartre: The Bohemian Epicentre
Of course my parents would have gone to Montmartre. Who doesn’t when they’re on an Impressionist trail?
Today, it’s a tourist hot spot. Street artists offer caricatures in the Place du Tertre, people jostle for space in bustling cafes and stream up the ‘Butte’ to the domed Sacré-Coeur.
The latter half of the 19th century was different.
Montmartre’s steep winding streets embraced seedy bars, artist studios, and cafés buzzing with fierce intellectual discussions. Cabarets and cancan dancers were all the rage, and an anything-goes atmosphere reigned.
The Bohemian atmosphere (and cheap rent) was creative catnip for artists like Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Degas.
The Musée de Montmartre
The Musée de Montmartre offers a glimpse into this time. Set in a 16th-century building, it was home and studio to a long list of artists. Renoir once lived here and later, Susan Valendon and her son Utrillo.
It was in this building, in fact, that Renoir painted Moulin de la Galette, the painting of the Montmartre dance hall I’d been eying at the Musée d’Orsay.
🇫🇷 Travel Tips for Montmartre Museum
- Address: 12, rue Cortort 75018 Paris. Visit the website.
- Getting there: Line 12 to Lamarck-Caulaincourt or Line 2 to Anvers (then funicular of Montmartre)
- Museum entrance includes entrance to the Renoir Gardens.
- Book a Skip-the-Line ticket to the Montmartre Museum here.
The Musée Fournaise on the Island of Impressionists
Another of Renoir’s blockbuster paintings, Luncheon of the Boating Party, was painted on the Island of Impressionists.
An off-the-trail hideaway, this little island on the Seine was, according to Renoir, “the prettiest place in the outskirts of Paris.”
Officially called the Île de Chatou, it was an escape from the city centre for French Impressionists like Renoir, Gustave Caillebotte and Monet, who would gather here to paint, row and socialize.
While the opposite banks are now lined with urban sprawl, there are precious clues to the hedonistic haven it was.
At the interactive Musée Fournaise, you can get a taste of the vibrant life that flourished during Impressionist times as well as the artists’ struggles for acceptance.
🇫🇷 Travel Tips for the Fournaise Museum
- Address: Impressionists Island, 3 rue du Bac, 74800 Chatou
- Getting there: Take the RER A to Rueil-Malmaison Station. From Exit 1 “Rue des Deux Gares”, walk in the direction of Chatou to the bridge. In the middle of the bridge, go down on the right to the Island.
Luncheon of the Boating Party – An Impressionist Masterpiece
There are also other landmarks on Chatou not to be missed.
On the riverside path, a large reproduction of Luncheon of the Boating Party conjures up sunlit dust of the past. It’s especially meaningful combined with a meal on the balcony of the Restaurant Maison Fournaise, as this is where the painting is set.
Luncheon of the Boating Party is one of the finest Impressionist paintings in Paris. It captures a mood, a moment – an idyllic day among friends.
The 14 figures are friends of Renoir’s. Boating fanatic Gustave Caillebotte, whose magnificent estate, the Maison Caillebotte, is another top Impressionist sight in the Paris region, is seated in the bottom right.
Aline Charigot, who Renoir would later marry, holds a lap dog on the left.
Alphonsine Fournaise, the daughter of the restaurant owner, is also featured along with actresses, civil servants, critics and, oddly enough, the former mayor of Saigon.
It’s a spellbinding scene of camaraderie and high spirits, a golden group on a summer afternoon, and it made me think of my own parents’ wedding.
Paris – A Creative Hub
They were married at the British Embassy in Paris, and held a party at their budget Left Bank hotel. About 30 people attended.
“How did you know so many people?” I’d asked my mother. “Who were they?”
“Oh, you know.” She motioned vaguely. “Artists and musicians. People your father knew from art school.”
I didn’t know. It wasn’t something my parents talked about much.
I pictured them in a setting much like Luncheon of the Boating Party, a group of young artists full of ambition and energy, plotting their futures against the heady backdrop of Paris, and buoyed by the lush creative heritage of France.
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