Le décor impressionniste: Aux sources des Nymphéas 

Organised by the French public institution, the Établissement Public des musées d’Orsay et de l’Orangerie – Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, and in an exceptional partnership with London’s National Gallery, the exhibition Le décor impressionniste: Aux sources des Nymphéas retraces the origins of the creation of Claude Monet’s famed series of monumental mural paintings and also reviews the art of decoration as put into practice by the Impressionists.

From the late 1850s and the origins of Impressionism to the 1920s, when Monet completed his Nymphéas, the links between the Impressionists and decoration were both varied, fertile and central in many aspects, given the following in particular: the output of works that were decorative by nature or aim, or by way of experimentation; the exploration and transformation of the notion of “the decorative”; and the role of this ambiguous notion in the unfolding “scandal” of Impressionism. Le décor impressionniste: Aux sources des Nymphéas aims to explore this quite different angle on the history of Impressionism, highlighting specific works by Bracquemond, Boudin, Caillebotte, Cassatt, Cézanne, Degas, Manet, Monet, Morisot, Pissarro and Renoir, brought together from across the world, some rarely or never, up until now, put on public display in France. Via one hundred paintings, drawings and objects, the exhibition reveals how the Impressionists set out on a new path, guided by the conviction that art, to quote Renoir, is above all meant “to brighten up the walls”!