Which Impressionist painter's bequest formed the core of the Musée d'Orsay's Impressionist collection?

Gustave Caillebotte’s bequest formed the core of the Musée d’Orsay’s Impressionist collection.

Caillebotte was both an Impressionist painter and one of the movement’s most important collectors and patrons. After his death in 1894, he left his collection of fellow artists’ works to the French state, hoping that paintings often rejected by official taste would be preserved and publicly displayed.

The collection included major works by Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, Paul Cézanne, and Édouard Manet. The government initially resisted accepting the entire bequest, reflecting continued hostility toward modern art. Ultimately, only part of the proposed collection entered the national museums.

The accepted works were first displayed in an annex of the Musée du Luxembourg in 1897, then moved to the Louvre in 1929 and the Jeu de Paume in 1947. When the Musée d’Orsay opened in 1986, the Caillebotte bequest became a foundation of its Impressionist holdings. Caillebotte’s own paintings were not the main point of the bequest; it was his collection of other artists’ works that mattered here.