The National Gallery of Australia received a wonderful gift Masterpieces from Paris: van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and beyond when the Musée d’Orsay embarked on a series of renovations. SASHA GRISHIN focuses on ten works.

The Masterpieces from Paris show at the National Gallery in Canberra (which ran from December 2009 to April 2010) has undoubtedly delivered what it promised — an outstanding exhibition of European avant-garde art which emanated largely from Paris in the closing decades of the nineteenth century and the opening decades of the twentieth century.

There can be no claims that this is a coherent exhibition and much of its strength stems from the diversity in artists and the very strong artistic calibre of the work. Although I am a fairly frequent visitor to the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, I am seeing many of the works properly for the first time, rather than in the challenging and frequently poorly lit spaces on the upper levels of that venerable old railway station.

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Image: Claude Monet, In the Norwegian, c. 1887, oil on canvas, 98 x 131cm. Musée d'Orsay, Paris ©RMN (Musée d'Orsay)/Hervé Lewandowski