Tonight with the Impressionists. Paris 1874

In conjunction with the exhibition Paris 1874. Inventing Impressionism which is opening on 26th March 2024 and in co-production with Excurio – GEDEON Experiences, the Musée d’Orsay invites visitors aged 8 and over to take part in an immersive virtual reality expedition: Tonight with the Impressionists. Paris 1874. Based on an original idea and original historical reconstructions by GEDEON Experiences and with the scientific support of curators Sylvie Patry and Anne Robbins, this innovative immersive experience offers a one-hour tour of the Galerie Amont in the Musée d’Orsay.

A 45-minute virtual reality expedition takes you on a journey back in time: transported 150 years ago to Paris, you will witness the inauguration of the first Impressionist exhibition. You will meet the artists and discover their work in a way that has never been possible before. The experience Tonight with the Impressionists. Paris 1874 invites you to take part in a fully immersive collective experience, and to experience this key moment in the genesis of Impressionism, and more broadly in the history of art.

Paris, 15 April 1874, eight o’clock in the evening, the neon gas sign in front of the famous photographer Nadar’s studio lights up Boulevard des Capucines. equipped with a latest-generation virtual reality headset, here you are transported into the Paris of the time, in the bustle of the Grand Boulevards, opposite the new Garnier opera house about to be finished. After being immersed in the atmosphere of Paris as it was in the second half of the 19th century, you stroll down Boulevard des Capucines at nightfall. You get to number 35 and make your way into the studio of the famous photographer Nadar. On the building’s 2nd and 3rd floors, some thirty painters have gathered to present a selection of around 165 of their works to the public. During your time there, you make the acquaintance of the movement’s emblematic painters and their works.

The exhibition that opens its doors in the famous photographer Nadars’ former studio on 15 April 1874 at eight o’clock in the evening brings together independent artists who have chosen to exhibit their works outside the official Salon without, however, turning their event into a “Salon des Refusés” [i.e. exhibition of rejected works]. Ambitious, provocative, visionary… the painters involved include Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Paul Cézanne, Camille Pissarro and Edgar Degas.

Your visit is interspersed with digressions that gradually enable you to understand the ties of friendship and enmity that unite them, what it is they are seeking, and the importance of the artistic movement they are in the process of creating. You can even visit Monet’s hotel room in Le Havre, where he worked on his famous painting Impression, Soleil Levant. From Paris to Normandy, you’ll be taking part in a real journey to the sites of Impressionism in its begining, an extraordinary journey to the heart of creation.

The program Tonight with the Impressionists. Paris 1874 is based on in-depth research that enabled us to bring together the sources required for the truest possible reproduction of Nadar’s studio and the exhibition that took place in it:

land registers, architectural plans, aerial photographs and the studio’s archives were all studied, as were the exhibition catalogue, the artists’ correspondence and journalists’ and critics’ descriptions, etc. Thanks to the work carried out by experts in 3D reconstruction, architecture and heritage, and with the help of specialists in Impressionism, this virtual experience invites you to take part in one of the major events in art history. In this experience, recreated for the first time and keeping as close as possible to historical reality, the first impressionist exhibition reopens its doors for a spectacular nighttime visit as a family or with friends… Welcome to the heart of Impressionism!