The stories behind the paintings

The face barely moves. Everything else does. In Vincent van Gogh's Self-Portrait of September 1889, orange hair and beard lock against a field of turquoise and blue that coils like weather. The eyes hold you with a hard, green-rimmed stare while the background refuses to sit still. Painted at the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole in Saint-Remy-de-Provence, this is the Van Gogh most visitors meet at the Musee d'Orsay: not the work jacket and palette of other self-portraits, but a man in a suit, framed by motion. Quick facts Artist: Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) Date: September 1889 (Saint-Remy-de-Provence) Medium: Oil on canvas (65 x 54.2 cm) Collection: Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF 1949 17; F627) Notable fact: Gift of Paul and Marguerite Gachet, 1949; painted months after The Starry Night , with a swirling ground that answers that sky Vincent van Gogh, Self-Portrait ( Portrait de l'artiste ), 1889. Oil on canvas. Musee d'Orsay, Paris. Saint-Remy, After th...

In the spring of 1863, two paintings of nude women divided Paris — and only one of them made an emperor fall in love. At the official Paris Salon, Alexandre Cabanel's The Birth of Venus stopped visitors in their tracks: a goddess reclining on a bed of sea-foam, luminous and weightless. Napoleon III liked it so much that he bought it on the spot for his own private collection. Today the painting is one of the most visited works at the Musée d'Orsay — and one of the clearest examples of how 19th-century France decided which nudity was art, and which was scandal. Quick facts Artist: Alexandre Cabanel (1823–1889) Date: 1863 Medium: Oil on canvas, 130 × 225 cm (51.1 × 88.5 in) Collection: Musée d'Orsay, Paris Notable owner: Napoleon III, who bought it at the 1863 Salon Alexandre Cabanel, The Birth of Venus , 1863. Oil on canvas, Musée d'Orsay, Paris. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. A Goddess Born From Sea-Foam Cabanel took his subject from classical...

Sunday light falls through trees onto blue dresses, straw hats, and a crowded Montmartre dance floor. Pierre-Auguste Renoir's Bal du moulin de la Galette (1876) does not freeze a single hero. It catches a neighborhood at play - dappled faces, overlapping talk, and the Impressionist bet that modern leisure was worth as much paint as any battlefield. Quick facts Artist: Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) Date: 1876 Medium: Oil on canvas Collection: Musee d'Orsay, Paris Notable fact: Painted in Montmartre; a manifesto of Impressionist leisure - broken color, outdoor light, and contemporary crowd life Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Bal du moulin de la Galette , 1876. Oil on canvas. Musee d'Orsay, Paris. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Montmartre on a Weekend The Moulin de la Galette was a real open-air dance hall where working Parisians paid for wine, galettes, and an afternoon of flirtation. Renoir peopled the canvas with friends and locals rather than allegory....

Two damned men tear at each other while Dante and Virgil look on. Teeth find a neck; muscles knot; colour goes livid. William-Adolphe Bouguereau's Dante and Virgil (1850) is not the gentle academic polish later audiences expected from him. It is Hell with anatomy lessons - a young painter, twice rejected for the Prix de Rome, choosing violence to prove he could make beauty hurt. Quick facts Artist: William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) Date: 1850 Medium: Oil on canvas Collection: Musee d'Orsay, Paris Notable fact: Inferno scene: Gianni Schicchi bites Capocchio in the eighth circle; critic Theophile Gautier praised its muscles, nerves, tendons, and bites William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Dante and Virgil , 1850. Musee d'Orsay, Paris. A Career Bet on the Inferno After rejections in 1848 and 1849, Bouguereau needed a statement. He had already shown ambition with Equality Before Death ; Dante offered something darker. He picks a brief, brutal encounter from the eig...