[PAUL RUIZ ART BLOG]

I have just left the National Gallery of Australia and what better way to kill time waiting for the flight home than to share some highlights from my visit to Masterpieces from Paris (Post Impressionism from the Musée d’Orsay).

I’m hardly the art critic and this is no review as such, merely a sampling of my ten favourite works from the 112 on show. It was great to see the queue stretch back about a hundred metres; anxious waiting aside, it was a heartening reminder that people continue to seek out and quench their inherent desire for art experience.

By the time I had entered the fourth gallery space (there were six of them filled with paintings), the sense of awe in the room was palpable. I understand people naturally gravitate to artists with celebrity status. Now without understating the impact of Van Gogh, Gauguin or Cézanne on modern art, however, I want to share here the works by slightly lesser-known artists which I found the most striking – the ones that compelled me to take that third and fourth look and seemed to go straight for the central nervous system.

In no particular order ….

Vilhelm HAMMERSHØI Rest 1905

REDON Eyes Closed 1890

BONNARD The White Cat 1894

Toulouse LAUTREC Lady Clown Cha-U-Kao 1895

BONNARD The Man and the Woman 1900

BONNARD Woman dozing on a bed 1899

DENIS, Landscape with green trees 1893

SEURAT, Model from the back 1887

VUILLARD, Profile of woman in green hat 1891

KHNOPFF, Marie Monnom 1887

There were other great works of course, so reducing it to my favourite ten wasn’t easy. With so many works to study, four and a half hours passed very quickly. I left feeling more than a little stunned and beguiled by the achievements of artists from this era in modern art, and their enduring influence on the artists which came after them.

And from the looks on other faces, I wasn’t the only one.

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Click HERE to see all the works included in this show.