1000 Museums

Located right in the heart of Paris in the Tuileries Gardens and renovated in 2006, the Musée de l\’Orangerie offers the visitor a poetic and artistic presentation of two prestigious collections:

Water Lilies (Les Nymphéas)

Both monumental and intimate, Water Lilies (Les Nymphéas) are the ultimate expression of Claude Monet\’s artistic ideas, an incredible project by a painter who wanted to explore all the variations of light in his garden at Giverny. The paintings are housed in two elliptical rooms, and encourage the visitor to gaze in endless contemplation. After the horror of the First World War, Monet wanted his work to take on this aesthetic and poetic dimension, and provide a haven for peaceful meditation.

The Walter-Guillaume Collection

The Walter-Guillaume Collection, the intellectual project of art dealer Paul Guillaume and his wife Domenica, is a unique collection illustrating the creative work of the first decades of the 20th century. A friend of Guillaume Apollinaire and Max Jacob, he provided support to Picasso, Soutine, Derain and Marie Laurencin as well as taking an interest in their predecessors, particularly Renoir and Cézanne. Guillaume\’s premature death in 1934 prevented his dream of transforming his private collection into a museum of modern art from being realised. His wife completed and modified the collection, reorganising it around works representing modern Classicism and Impressionism, before transmitting it to the French State in 1960.

Image courtesy of Flickr user mckrista1976

CC BY-ND 2.0