There is a concentration of people in the Norman town or at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris as Impressionism marks its 150th anniversary. However, a survey finds that the pictorial trend shines in approximately 50 sites, some of which are little recognized.
Over six million people visited this year, compared to last year's six million. To say that Impressionism draws large audiences would be an understatement, but the roughly 50 locations in Normandy and Ile-de-France devoted to this well-known visual movement show a highly unequal distribution of visitors, per a BVA Xsight survey released on Monday. This study, which was commissioned by the travel company "Destination Impressionisme," whose goal is to boost tourism in these regions, gives a summary of visitors in this year marking the 150th anniversary of the movement that was made famous by Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Alfred Sisley, and Auguste Renoir.
More than half of the roughly 4,000 respondents—a mix of tourists and day visitors—who were either French (61% of respondents) or foreigners (39%), had either gone or planned to visit the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. The Parisian establishment is reportedly throwing a lavish celebration for this important milestone, including a virtual reality experience called "An Evening with the Impressionists, Paris 1874" and an exhibition titled "Paris 1874: Inventing Impressionism."
Completing the top 5 most popular websites are: Impressionist and post-Impressionist paintings can be found at the Orangerie Museum in the capital, the Museum of Impressionisms in Giverny (Eure), the Marmottan Monet Museum in Paris, and Claude Monet's house and gardens in Giverny (Eure), which saw a record 750,000 visitors in 2023. A quintet that takes up a significant portion of visitors to the Impressionism Destination—to the extent of overshadowing other groups, to be sure.
While numerous impressionist painters, including Paul Cézanne, Camille Corot, Camille Pissarro, and Vincent Van Gogh, found inspiration in Auvers-sur-Oise, the Château d'Auvers and Auberge Ravoux, also referred to as Maison Van Gogh, remain forgotten despite the renown of their Givernois and Parisian companions. Merely 7% and 6% of the respondents said they had found them or intended to do so soon. Recalling the wealth of the pictorial movement are the Maison Caillebotte in Yerres, the Pissarro museum in Pontoise, and the Maison Impressionniste Claude Monet in Argenteuil, all located in the Île-de-France. Nonetheless, the majority of tourists are still unaware of them, since only 10% of respondents claimed to have heard of these three locations.
The two most overlooked impressionist locations in the area are still the Château-musée de Dieppe, which has a good collection of impressionist paintings, and the Thomas Henry museum in Cherbourg, which has the largest collection of Jean-François Millet paintings. Far more than the Eugène Boudin Museum in Honfleur and the Museum of Fine Arts in Rouen, which are somewhat well-known among those polled. Will this wrong be made right after 150 years of Impressionism?
seen in Le Figaro.