The world’s leading museum of Impressionist art is sending an unprecedented number of its masterpieces on tour in France and the United States to mark the movement’s 150th anniversary, it announced Tuesday.

Impressionism was born in April 1874 when a group of painters including Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Paul Cezanne – tired of being rejected by the government-backed Paris Salon – held their own independent show.

The Musee d’Orsay, which today holds the world’s largest Impressionist collection, will send 178 of its 400 key works on a Tour de France, spreading them around 34 museums in early 2024. 

It will also hold an exhibition from March to August, reuniting many of the works from the first show in 1874, set alongside more traditional works favoured by the Salon to show the contrast with the revolutionary Impressionists. 

Monet’s Impression, Soleil Levant (Impression, Rising Sun) of 1872. Photo: Wikipedia

The exhibition will then travel to the National Gallery of Art in Washington from September 8 to January 19, 2025. 

Among the works will be Monet’s Impression, Soleil Levant (Impression, Rising Sun) of 1872. It was an art critic’s sarcastic response to the painting that gave the movement its name. 

As is increasingly common at major exhibitions, there will be a virtual reality segment, immersing visitors in the Paris of that era, and allowing them to experience what it was like at that first ground-breaking exhibition.