16 March 2027 — 18 July 2027

Family Histories

Far from being an unchanging model, the family evolved throughout the 19th century with the political, social and moral upheavals of the age. Governed by the Civil Code, upheld by the bourgeoisie and shaken by first-wave feminism and by romantic ideas of the couple, it became an ideal vantage point from which to observe the tensions of modern society. Artists, both actors in and witnesses to these changes, portrayed them in ways that were sometimes idealised, sometimes critical and occasionally deeply ambiguous. Drawing on the Musée d’Orsay’s extensive collections, the exhibition brings together paintings, sculptures, photographs, films, drawings and archives on the many ways of “being a family” in France between 1848 and 1914. From Edgar Degas to Pierre Bonnard, Victor Hugo to Nadar, the Lumière brothers to Alice Guy and Camille Claudel to Rosa Bonheur, these works tell stories of love, lineage, inheritance, domination, rivalry and emancipation. The exhibition opens with the close links between family and politics, then unfolds in five thematic sections. “Home Sweet Home” looks at the house as the embodiment of the family and of domestic intimacy, from the large portraits of extended families by Degas, Tissot and Bazille to the destitute homeless families depicted by Daumier and Stevens. Rosa Bonheur and the menagerie she kept at Thomery, along with the first 20th-century films showing emotional bonds between animals and humans, already pointed towards alternative models. “Be a mother and keep quiet” addresses the burden of motherhood and the roles assigned to women. Whether mothers or wet nurses, workers or artists, young or mature, “old maids” or grandmothers, women experienced – in their bodies and their imaginations – pregnancy and breastfeeding, ageing and infertility, adoption, abandonment and the loss of children. The ambivalent view of motherhood in Berthe Morisot’s work and the fascinating persona of the Countess of Castiglione paint a complex picture of maternity. “In the name of the father” highlights the omnipresence of a patriarchal system constantly sustained by the mechanics of transmission: the family name, paternal authority and material inheritance. Through the figure of the loving father, which emerged in the late 19th century – from Émile Zola to Léopold Chauveau – visitors also discover the role of cherished objects such as photograph albums, phonograph cylinders and soft toys which, by embodying the family, help it to exist. A fourth section, “Sibling attachments”, explores horizontal ties: solidarity, rivalry, mourning and succession. The quarrel between the Tournachon brothers over the Nadar pseudonym, the tenderness of Alfred Stevens’s Brother and Sister by the Sea at Honfleur and Odilon Redon’s pastels expressing grief at the death of a child before the birth of his second son show how much the family was also a realm of conflicting emotions. Finally, “Couple arrangements” examines the tensions and compromises between marriage, love, desire and social convention. Maurice and Marthe Denis, Pierre Bonnard and Maria Boursin, Camille Claudel and Auguste Rodin, Claude Monet and Camille Doncieux, Misia Natanson, and Verlaine and Rimbaud bear witness to passionate unions, hidden desires and power relations, as well as to the refusal of marriage or exclusivity in a society where marital norms were often questioned, sometimes subverted and certainly transformed. Between happy memories and painful secrets, conflicts and attachments, the exhibition presents the family as a living, embodied place full of contradictory feelings and aspirations and undergoing profound change. It also creates a dialogue between the 19th century we have inherited and the present, through “cartes blanches” given to contemporary figures invited to cast a sensitive or critical eye on works that tell yesterday’s family stories – and in doing so speak to us about families today. Curated by Servane Dargnies-de Vitry, Head Curator of Paintings, and Marie Robert, Head Curator of Photography and Cinema, Musée d’Orsay.

Musée d'Orsay