Largest exhibition of French Musee d'Orsay opens in Shanghai

The largest exhibition of the French Musee d'Orsay opened on Thursday at the Museum of Art Pudong in Shanghai.

Paths to Modernity: Masterpieces from the Musee d'Orsay, Paris, features more than 100 masterpieces from the core collection of the French museum for a one-stop-only global showcase, going on through Oct 12.

Including paintings by Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet, Paul Cezanne, Edgar Degas and so on, the exhibition charts almost all the important artistic movements of French art from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century.

Key highlights from the exhibits include Van Gogh's Bedroom in Arles and Self-Portrait by Vincent van Gogh, The Gleaners by Jean-Fran?ois Millet, Tahitian Women (also known as On the Beach) by Paul Gauguin, Stacks of Wheat, and End of Summer by Claude Mone, Emile Zola by Edouard Manet, The Dance Foyer at the Opera on the rue Le Peletier by Edgar Degas, Young Girls at the Piano by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and so on.

Among the core highlights, Post-Impressionist master Vincent van Gogh's Van Gogh's Bedroom in Arles and Self-Portrait powerfully demonstrate his intense emotional expression, bold color application, and vigorous brushwork, says curator of the exhibition, Stephane Guegan, a renowned art historian and scientific advisor to the president of Musee d'Orsay.

According to Guegan, Van Gogh's Bedroom in Arles depicts his intimate space during his time in southern France, conveying a longing for "absolute repose" through its tense composition and restrained palette while his Self-Portrait reveals the artist's inner emotional state with its fiercely expressive texture and sculptural materiality.