Peter Doig Hangs with the Masters at Musée d'Orsay

By Simon Fisher – 20 October 2023, Paris

For his first solo exhibition in Paris in 15 years, the legendary Scottish painter Peter Doig arrives at the Musée d’Orsay with Reflections of the Century (17 October 2023–21 January 2024).

The exhibition comprises two groups of work. The first is a selection of paintings by Doig made over the two decades he lived in Trinidad. The second is the artist’s curation and commentary on a selection of Musée d’Orsay’s collection.

Viewers are presented with a set of wistful snapshots of Caribbean memory, displayed on a more expansive scale than at the artist’s recent exhibition at London’s Courtauld Gallery.

Curated along the walls of the museum’s iconic dome rooms, in and amongst its historic collection, this latest presentation allows a fresh interpretation of Doig’s masterful, transient scenes.

Of note were the intense charges of orange splashed across three canvases: the burnt earth in Paragon (2006), the canoe in 100 Years Ago (2000–2001), and the jumper in Two Trees (2017)—a consistency worth marvelling at considering the latter two were painted almost 20 years apart.

‘The study of paintings made over the last 150 years, a number of which are held at Musée d’Orsay, has been fundamental to the development of my own artistic practice,’ Doig explains.

‘My intention with this exhibition is not to attempt to enter the past, but rather to see what happens when something is left open and vulnerable to the ways that the past can enter it.’