“Painting walls was my life’s dream,” confessed Edgar Degas once. Despite appearances, decorations and painting en plein air go hand-in-hand in the history of Impressionism. Find out at an exhibition at the Musée de l’Orangerie, the “home” of the Water Lilies of Monet, not by chance, also known as La Grand Décoration. They’ve come from museums and collections from around the world, the 80 works chosen for the occasion - paintings, drawings, ceramics and custom-made fans show how, for the painters of light, art was, foremost, for pleasing the eye and also for “brightening up the walls”. Wanting to make quotidian life more beautiful, the Impressionists didn’t hesitate in experimenting by painting on every possible support - from walls to everyday objects, from paper to porcelain. Along with Monet and Degas, showing off this little-known side of the Impressionists are masters like Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, Paul Cézanne, Edouard Manet and Camille Pissarro - l’Orangerie becomes an interior design studio, an invitation to imagine the homes of artists and collectors at the end of the 1800s.
