8 Paintings You Must See in Paris

Art lovers arriving in Paris usually head in three directions: to the Louvre to see masterpieces by the old masters, to the Centre Pompidou to view modern art exhibitions, and to the Musée d'Orsay to feast their eyes on works from the 19th and 20th centuries. We'll leave the Louvre and the Pompidou for another time, and instead invite you to stroll through the Orsay and admire the most famous works by the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. Here is a list of paintings you shouldn't miss — ones worth stopping to look at more closely.

"A Burial at Ornans" (1849), Gustave Courbet

Courbet was the founder of mid-19th-century French Realism and sought to break away as much as possible from the school of Romantics such as Jacques Louis David, Eugène Delacroix, and Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. Courbet aimed to create a new, socially conscious art grounded in the earthly world, one that immortalized the peasant class without idealizing it. This work is monumental in scale alone, and the poor are depicted at the center and in the foreground — a position of privilege once reserved for the wealthy and noble. The painting also alludes to France's secularization: the clergy are portrayed almost as caricatures, turning their backs on Christ, unnoticed even by the mourners. These choices by Courbet were among the first steps toward modernism — later, the Impressionists would want to paint outdoors and paint what they actually saw: ordinary city dwellers and their everyday lives.

"Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette" (1876), Pierre-Auguste Renoir

While Courbet tried to bring peasants into art, in this painting Pierre-Auguste Renoir portrayed the merriment of a popular Parisian café and the pleasure-seeking bourgeoisie who filled Paris in the 1870s. After Baron Haussmann's renovations, the French capital was transformed from a cramped, grimy medieval city into a modern magnet for writers, artists, and hedonists of every stripe. Renoir's painting captures precisely the atmosphere of this new Paris — people enjoying the day, dancing and drinking with friends. Full of romance and life, this painting also offers a great deal of insight into the fashion and spirit of the era.

"Dinner at the Ball" (1879), Edgar Degas

This painting is small, but it is without doubt one of Degas's best-known works. At first glance it closely resembles Renoir's "Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette," also depicting the amusements of city dwellers, but this painting is more of a warning about the bourgeois status quo. In a decadent, lavish setting with chandeliers, ornate suits and gowns, and gold and red adornments, the figures themselves remain faceless and anonymous. The blurred imagery creates not only a frenzied atmosphere but also suggests that nothing is fixed, that no one has a single, stable identity — in a materialistic world, everything is in constant flux. Degas seems to be saying that we should not give up our individuality in the pursuit of luxury and power.

"Olympia" (1863), Édouard Manet

Manet's "Olympia" was one of the most controversial works of its time, provoking outrage among critics. Manet challenges the tradition of the idealized nude and instead turns the viewer's gaze toward a real woman of his era. Olympia is a prostitute who feels no shame in her nakedness — she is even proud of it. She looks directly at the viewer; she is not the passive embodiment of beauty women are so often reduced to in paintings. Manet wanted not only to break free from the shackles of tradition, but also to show the irony that, even as Paris was becoming a modern city, high society still had no real sense of sexual liberation or women's independence. Critics disliked both the subject of the painting and its execution — deemed too plain and poorly composed.

"Bazille's Studio" (1870), Frédéric Bazille

As the 19th century progressed, tensions over gender roles grew ever more pronounced, and in this painting Bazille highlights very effectively the differing situations of men and women in the art world of the time. The painting depicts a group of men, likely the artist's friends. They talk, look around, and analyze. In the paintings shown around them, every woman is depicted nude. These muses symbolize women's position at the time — trapped within domestic, pastoral scenes on canvas, while men look them over and pass judgment.

"The Card Players" (1890–1895), Paul Cézanne

The artist painted more than one version of this scene, and together they rank among the most important works of Post-Impressionism. Like Courbet, Cézanne sought to portray ordinary peasants living in his native Provence. Unconcerned with realism, he rendered his figures with broad brushstrokes in rich earth tones to convey the warmth of the region and its people. Far from the Parisian metropolis, Cézanne wanted his paintings to express the stability and harmony of Provence's timeless way of life.

"London, Houses of Parliament" (1904), Claude Monet

Although Claude Monet is best known for his views of Paris and the French countryside, one of his finest late works depicts the Houses of Parliament in London. As the founder of Impressionism, Monet abandoned the precision traditionally demanded of art; he wanted instead to capture the atmosphere of a fleeting moment, the sunlight breaking through mist. Monet was firmly convinced that a painting should capture a scene in a way no camera ever could. "London, Houses of Parliament" is a superb example of the Impressionist style Monet had so thoroughly mastered, where the contrast between muted reds and yellows and the darker blues and black silhouette of the building creates the impression of sunlight glowing through the fog.

"Self-Portrait" (1889), Vincent van Gogh

In 1886, Van Gogh moved to Paris, where he blended what he had learned from his Impressionist contemporaries with the stylistic influence of Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints. The result is a subtle, free, almost fluid style. Yet for Van Gogh, self-portraits were more than an experiment — they were attempts to discover an "undivided self," even as the artist's inner "I," wrestling with manic depression, remained fractured and uncertain. His illness shaped all of his work; the calm, red-haired Van Gogh here stands in stark contrast to the joyful brushstrokes of the background — perhaps a hint at the discomfort and sense of not belonging the artist felt.

You'll find the Musée d'Orsay at 1 Rue de la Légion d'Honneur, 75007 Paris. It is open daily from 9:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., until 9:45 p.m. on Thursdays, and closed on Mondays. Admission costs €12. We recommend buying the combined ticket, which costs a little more but is also valid for the Musée de l'Orangerie. The Orangerie is a small museum near the Louvre where you'll spend no more than an hour or an hour and a half, but it lets you continue the acquaintance with Claude Monet begun at the Orsay and see a few more works by other Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. The Orangerie was designed specifically to house Claude Monet's water lilies, so that in the heart of Paris you can feel as if you've stepped into a refreshing garden.

Bon voyage!