Upper level: Impressionism and Post-Impressionism
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Musée d'Orsay

To continue chronologically, proceed straight to the upper level, whose rooms have a more intimate feel, done up almost like a suite of attic studios. You'll first pass through the private collection donated by assiduous collector and art historian Moreau-Nélaton (room 29), featuring some of the most famous Impressionist images like Monet's Poppies and Manet's Déjeuner sur l'Herbe, which sent the critics into apoplexies of rage and disgust when it appeared in 1863, and was refused for that year's Salon.

From this point on, you'll have to fight off the persistent sense of familiarity or recognition – Degas' L'Absinthe, Renoir's Bal du Moulin de la Galette, Monet's Femme a l'Ombrelle – in order to appreciate Impressionism's vibrant, experimental vigour. There's a host of small-scale landscapes and outdoor scenes by Renoir, Sisley, Pissarro and Monet in rooms 30–32, paintings which owed much of their brilliance to the novel practice of setting up easels in the open – often as not on the banks of the Seine. Less typical works include Degas' ballet-dancers, which demonstrate his principal interest in movement and line as opposed to the more common Impressionist concern with light, and Le Berceau (1872), by Berthe Morisot, the first woman to join the early Impressionists. More heavyweight masterpieces can be found in rooms 34 and 39, devoted to Monet and Renoir in their middle and late periods. The development of Monet's obsessions is shown with five of his Rouen cathedral series, each painted in different light conditions. Room 35 is full of the fervid colours and disturbing rhythms of Van Gogh, while Cézanne, another step removed from the preoccupations of the mainstream Impressionists, is wonderfully represented in room 36. One of the canvases most revealing of his art is Pommes et Oranges (1895–1900), with its multiple viewpoints.

Passing the café – with its summer terrace and wonderful view of Montmartre through the giant railway clock – and the little rooms (37 and 38) housing Degas' atmospheric pastels, you arrive at a dimly lit, melancholy chamber (40) devoted to more pastels, by Redon, Manet, Mondrian and others. The next and final suite of rooms on this level is given over to the various offspring of Impressionism, and has an edgier, more modern feel, with a much greater emphasis on psychology. It begins with Rousseau's dreamlike La Charmeuse de Serpent (1907) and continues past Gauguin's ambivalent Tahitian paintings to Pointillist works by Seurat (the famous Cirque), Signac and others, ending with Toulouse-Lautrec at his caricaturial nightclubbing best – one large canvas including a rear view of Oscar Wilde at his grossest.