Monet at the Musée d'Orsay: The Paintings and Where to Find Them

Monet at the Orsay is the fullest public account of his career anywhere: the Musée d'Orsay in Paris holds about ninety paintings by Claude Monet by our catalogue's count, from the vast Women in the Garden (1866) and the fragments of Luncheon on the Grass to Poppy Field (1873), The Magpie, La Gare Saint-Lazare, five Rouen Cathedrals and the Giverny lily pond. A number are lent out or on long-term deposit in regional French museums at any given time.

Where the Marmottan is the painter's studio collection, the Orsay is the public record: the pictures Monet showed at the Salon and the Impressionist exhibitions, and those bought by the state and by the collectors who left them to France. This guide picks the essential Monet works in the museum, explains how they got there, and gives practical notes for a visit.

How France came to own Monet

For most of Monet's life the French state bought almost nothing from him. The national collection was assembled largely by gift. The first great step was the bequest of the painter and collector Gustave Caillebotte, Monet's friend and supporter, who died in 1894 and left his Impressionist pictures to the nation. The state accepted only part of the bequest, after long and bitter argument, but it included several Monets, and they went on show at the Musée du Luxembourg in 1897.

Other gifts followed. Étienne Moreau-Nélaton gave his collection in 1906, and in 1911 the banker Isaac de Camondo bequeathed a magnificent group including Rouen Cathedrals. In 1921, with Clemenceau's encouragement, the state finally bought a major painting directly from the artist: Women in the Garden, which the Salon had rejected more than fifty years earlier. Later gifts, purchases and the recovery of works looted during the Second World War completed the collection. It was shown at the Jeu de Paume in the Tuileries from 1947, and moved to the converted Orsay railway station when the museum opened in 1986.

The 1860s: ambition on a grand scale

Monet's early pictures were enormous. Women in the Garden (1866–67) stands over two and a half meters tall; he painted it outdoors at Ville-d'Avray and dug a trench in the garden so he could lower the canvas and reach the top. Camille Doncieux posed for several of the four women. The light falls in patches through leaves onto white dresses, the shadows are colored, and the faces are barely described: the subject is sunlight on fabric.

Next to it are the surviving pieces of Luncheon on the Grass (1865–66), Monet's answer to Manet's scandalous picture of the same name. Monet left the huge canvas with a landlord as security for unpaid rent; it was damaged by damp, and he later cut it up. Two fragments are at Orsay. A smaller sketch of the whole composition is in the Pushkin Museum, Moscow.

From the same decade come The Magpie (1868–69), a snowy field near Étretat with a single black bird on a gate, perhaps the most beautiful study of white in nineteenth-century painting, and A Cart on the Snowy Road at Honfleur.

The Impressionist decade

The 1870s are the core of any visit. Poppy Field (1873), shown at the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874, sets two pairs of figures, probably Camille and Jean, wading through a slope of red poppies near Argenteuil. The poppies are not flowers but dabs of vermilion, larger in the foreground than the figures' faces. Nearby hang Regatta at Argenteuil (c. 1872), its reflections built from loose, almost separate strokes of pure color, The Luncheon, and The Railway Bridge at Argenteuil.

La Gare Saint-Lazare (1877) is the Orsay's picture from the station series: the glass and iron shed seen from inside, locomotives breathing blue and white steam that fills the vault. Rue Montorgueil, Paris, Celebration of 30 June 1878 is a street of flags, red, white and blue flickering down the whole height of the canvas.

From Vétheuil there is Camille Monet on Her Deathbed (1879) and snowy views of the church.

Figures in the wind and the series

In 1886 Monet painted two pendants, Woman with a Parasol, Facing Left and its pair facing right, with Suzanne Hoschedé on a hilltop at Giverny. The faces are left blank; the wind, the grass and the parasol's shadow are the subject. They are among the last large figure paintings he made.

The series pictures of the 1890s are represented by five Rouen Cathedrals, including Rouen Cathedral, Portal and Tower Saint-Romain in Full Sunlight and Morning Light. When they hang side by side, as they usually do, they are the best possible demonstration of what Monet meant by painting not an object but the light on it. There is also the Belle-Île coast, and from London The Houses of Parliament, Sun Breaking Through the Fog (1904).

Giverny

The museum's later Monets come from the garden. The Water Lily Pond, Green Harmony (1899) shows the Japanese footbridge arching across a pond packed with lily pads, and its pair in rose of 1900 shows the same view a year later, warmer and looser. The Artist's Garden at Giverny (1900) is a path of purple irises. The late Weeping Willow and Blue Water Lilies show the style of his last decade, and Monet's 1917 self-portrait, one of very few he painted, is a rare look at the painter himself, painted with the same quick strokes as his garden.

Visiting: practical notes

• Where: the Musée d'Orsay is on the Left Bank of the Seine in the 7th arrondissement, across the river from the Tuileries and a short walk from the Orangerie.
• Opening times (from the museum's website): Tuesday to Sunday, 9:30 am to 6 pm, with a late opening on Thursdays until 9:45 pm. Closed on Mondays, 1 May and 25 December. Check the website for changes and book ahead; queues at the entrance can be long.
• Where the Monets hang: most of the Impressionist Monets are on the top floor (level 5), in the Impressionist galleries under the station's roof, where the Rouen Cathedrals, the Argenteuil and Giverny pictures hang near Renoir, Sisley, Pissarro and Degas. The large early canvases and the later works have moved between galleries over the years, and paintings are regularly lent to exhibitions, so check the museum's floor plan or online collection on the day.
• What to see first: if you have one hour, see Poppy Field, The Magpie, Women in the Garden, the Rouen Cathedrals and the two Women with a Parasol.

The Orsay lent heavily to the Monet centenary exhibitions of 2026, including Monet, painting time at the Orangerie (30 September 2026 to 25 January 2027), so some works may be across the river during that run. For other collections, see where to see Monet's paintings.