Marie and Félix Bracquemond, Decorative Arts Drawings

The Muse of Poetry turns a solemn face towards you, her silky dress worked up in charcoal and white gouache. She is one of seven muses Marie Bracquemond drew for a wall of ceramic tiles on the Haviland stand at the 1878 Exposition universelle, with Painting, Architecture and Sculpture standing in for the usual liberal arts. The panel itself is presumed destroyed and survives only in one photograph and studies like these.

It's one room, built from the nearly 200 paintings and drawings the couple's descendants gave Orsay in 2024. Marie's studies hang beside Félix's designs for ceramics and more: a centrepiece for the Rousseau service, a tureen for the Parabère service, a study for a peacock tapestry, and a December 1870 plate showing France dead on the bank of the Rhine.

Room 33 sits inside the Impressionist gallery on level 5, so it's an easy detour. It's covered by the €16 timed museum ticket (€12 on Thursday evenings, open to 9:45pm; free for under-18s and EEA residents under 26).