In the bowels of the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, in a gloomy basement that looks like an industrial warehouse – all concrete and insulated pipes and health and safety notices – there are treasures in tall, flat vertical cases, closely packed so a viewer can flick through them, and in perfect storage conditions. They are the works that aren’t displayed in the permanent collection and are rarely displayed at all.
In this unglamorous Aladdin’s cave is a remarkable collection of Impressionist works on paper – including pastels and watercolours. Leïla Jarbouai, chief curator at the Orsay, looks regretfully at one of them, a pastel on paper which is so fragile we can only view it laid flat, lest the colour flake away. “These things just can’t travel”, she says, sadly.
