MADRID.- Fundación MAPFRE and the Musée d’Orsay jointly present the exhibition, Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay which will be on view through April 22. The exhibition includes approximately 100 paintings from the Musée d’Orsay’s permanent collection and highlights the work of nearly 40 artists including Cézanne, Degas, Gauguin, Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Rousseau, Seurat, Sisley, Toulouse-Lautrec, van Gogh and Vuillard. The Musée d’Orsay will loan the exhibition while it undergoes a partial closure for refurbishment and reinstallation in anticipation of the Musée’s 25th anniversary in 2011.

Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay opens January 15, 2010 and runs through April 22, 2010. This exhibition puts forth nearly 100 works by the famous masters who called France their home during the mid-19th century and from whose midst arose one of the most original and recognizable of all artistic styles, Impressionism. This exhibition begins with paintings by naturalist artists such as Bougereau and Courbet and presents American expatriate James McNeil Whistler’s Arrangement in Gray and Black, known to many as “Whistler’s Mother.” Early work by Manet, Monet, Renoir and Sisley are on view as well as a selection of Degas’ paintings that depict images of the ballet, the racetrack and life in “la Belle Époque.” Notable works in this exhibition include:

• The Fife Player by Edouard Manet (1866)
• Family Reunion by Frédéric Bazille (1867)
• Arrangement in Gray and Black No. 1 or Portrait of the Artist’s Mother by James McNeil Whistler (1871)
• The Birth of Venus by William Adolphe Bouguereau (1879)
• The Cradle by Berthe Morisot (1872)
• Saint-Lazare Station by Claude Monet (1877)
• The Swing by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1876)
• Rue Montorgueil, Paris. Festival of June 30, 1878 by Claude Monet
• Racehorses Before the Stands by Edgar Degas (1866-1868)
• The Dancing Lesson by Edgar Degas (1873-1876)
• Portraits at the Stock Exchange by Edgar Degas (1878-1879)

Musée d’Orsay
The Musée d’Orsay, a train station created for the Paris International Exposition of 1900 and transformed into a museum by renowned architect Gae Aulenti, opened to the public on December 9, 1986 with its goal to highlight the art of the western world from the period 1848 through 1914. Its collection, one of the world’s finest, is comprised of paintings, sculpture, drawings, decorative arts, furniture, photography, and architectural work from this period consolidated from collections of the Louvre, Jeu de Paume and Modern Art Museum in Paris as well as major gifts from private collectors, artists and their heirs. The Musée d’Orsay’s collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings represent the finest survey of its kind in the world.