"This lavish volume tells the history of the Orsay Museum, its collections, and its illustrious donors. Central to the book, however, are the masterpieces on exhibit at the museum: the painting, sculpture, photography, and decorative arts that tell the story of the artistic and cultural developments that arose in France between the Second Empire and the Third Republic. From the Romanticism of Delacroix to Courbet's Realism, and from the landscapes of the Barbizon painters to the Symbolism of Burne-Jones, Redon, and Rodin, to the extraordinary Impressionist movement when artists such as Manet, Monet, and Renoir paved the way for the pioneers of modern art, this era formed the artistic sensibility of the entire twentieth century."--B&N.