I went first to the Musée d’Orsay, which was just heart-stopping. The museum itself is gorgeous. It’s in an old train station with a ceiling is high and arched, and full of light. (It’s also really well organized and easy to navigate <3 ) To see so many paintings that I’ve seen reproductions of for years… It feels so good, so rich.
My favorite to see was Courbet’s Un Enterrement à Ornans (1850), a somber picture of a burial in his home town:
It is so good. Looking, I wanted to cry a little. The experience of scale doesn't come across in images. Each figure is about life size, the picture, enormous. (How did he even paint that? On a ladder?) It's pretty famous for political/social commentary, but what attracts me is the quality of the paint, the colors, and especially the composition.
