The Musee d'Orsay in Paris is a national museum devoted to the art of the second half of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th, between the emergence of realism in 1848 and the beginnings of Fauvism in 1905. While it covers all fields of artistic creativity, much of its fame is due to the Impressionist collections that have been formed over a century and more, and include the masterpieces of Manet, Monet, Renoir, Gauguin, Van Gogh, and Toulouse Lautrec.

After an introduction which outlines the history of the collections and explains the chronological approach, the authors of the work - curators at the museum - analyze the pictorial creative output of this wonderfully rich and diverse period.