Japanese civilization places a major emphasis on the art of gardens, which embody ethical, religious, and aesthetic ideals, whether these are places for pleasure, meditation, contemplation, or strolling. Many of these gardens are listed as “exceptional landscape sites” under the Cultural Property Protection Act, and some are even listed as World Heritage Sites.

For a long time, this complex art was passed down by initiation from master to disciple, although manuals appeared as early as the year 1000. Drawing on different sources, from Shintoism, Taoism, Buddhism, geomancy and Chinese gardens, to later Zen Buddhism and the aesthetics of the tea ceremony, Japanese gardens have taken on different forms over the centuries.

This photography exhibition by Frédéric Soreau presents the different types of Japanese gardens through their design and form: landscaped gardens, moss gardens, Zen gardens, tea gardens, scholarly gardens and contemporary gardens. Presented in color and black and white, the photographs offer a sensitive and contrasting approach to these worlds. The whole constitutes an invitation to contemplation and knowledge, notably through the work of the great landscaper Mirei Shigemori, a major figure in the revival of the Japanese garden in the 20th century.

September 2 – 27, 2025

MAISON de la CULTURE du JAPON à Paris

101 bis quai Branly 75015 Paris

The Paris Years (1874-1884)

John Singer Sargent (Florence, 1856 – London, 1925) is, along with James McNeill Whistler, the most famous American artist of his generation and arguably one of the greatest painters of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Adored in the United States (his portrait of Madame X is considered the Mona Lisa of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s American art collection in New York), he is also celebrated in the United Kingdom, where he spent most of his career. In France, however, his name and work remain largely unknown, something the Musée d’Orsay exhibition hopes to change.

While the 2007 exhibition Painters of Light: Sargent & Sorolla (Paris, Musée du Petit Palais) introduced the artist to the French public, no solo exhibition has ever been devoted to him. Yet it was in France, and more specifically in Paris, that the young painter trained, developed his style and network of artists, achieved his first successes, and produced some of his greatest masterpieces, such as Dr. Pozzi at Home (1881, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles) and Daughters of Edward Darley Boit (1882, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston).

Developed in partnership with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the exhibition “Sargent. The Parisian Years” aims to introduce this painter to a wide audience. The exhibition brings together more than 90 works by John Singer Sargent, some of which have never been presented in France. It traces the meteoric rise of the young artist, who arrived in Paris in 1874 at the age of 18 to study with Carolus-Duran. The exhibition covers his career up to the mid-1880s, when he moved to London following the scandal caused by his portrait of Madame Gautreau (Madame X) at the Salon.

During this decade, Sargent forged both his style and personality in the dizzying Parisian art world, marked by the proliferation of exhibitions, the development of Naturalism and Impressionism, and the rise of Paris as the world capital of art. The young American painter found support among other expatriates but also integrated brilliantly into French society, forging ties with a circle of enlightened artists, writers, and patrons. The numerous portraits Sargent left us of these figures paint a captivating portrait of a rapidly changing, highly cosmopolitan society, where the old European aristocracy rubbed shoulders with the young fortunes of the new world. Constantly seeking new inspiration, Sargent rarely depicted “Parisian life” but took advantage of his roots in the French capital to make numerous trips to Europe and North Africa. He brought back numerous paintings, landscapes, and genre scenes, which combined exoticism, mystery, and sensuality. But it was in the field of portraiture that Sargent established himself as the most talented artist of his time, surpassing his masters and equaling the great artists of the past. His formidable technical skill, the brilliance of his touch, the shimmering of his colors, and the provocative assurance of his compositions disturbed the public and seduced critics who saw in him the worthy heir to Velázquez. Commenting in 1883 on one of his most original paintings, Portrait of the Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, the American writer Henry James, a friend of Sargent, noted that the artist “offers the strangely disturbing spectacle of a talent who, at the threshold of his career, has already nothing more to learn.”

In 1884, the portrait of Virginie Gautreau, which Sargent would later describe as “the best thing he ever did,” nevertheless provoked hostile reactions at the Salon. These reactions focused in particular on the sitter’s morality and reflected the worldly and social stakes of “public” portraiture in France at the end of the 19th century. A special section of the exhibition is dedicated to this moment in Sargent’s career and to this painting, exceptionally loaned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and on view in Paris for the first time since… 1884!

Based on extensive research, “Sargent. The Parisian Years” also takes stock of the lasting ties that the artist maintained with his city of training, even after his move to London. His commitment to the inclusion of Olympia by Manet, an artist he admired, in the national collections in 1890, bears witness to this. It was also in France that Sargent received his first form of institutional recognition, when the State purchased his portrait of the dancer Carmencita for the Musée du Luxembourg in 1892.

September 23rd, 2025 to January 11th, 2026

MUSEE D’ORSAY

Esplanade Valéry Giscard d’Estaing 75007 Paris

Given moments

A leader in humanist photography, Robert Doisneau is probably the most famous French photographer in the world: according to his daughter Francine, the Atelier Robert Doisneau and its collection of 450,000 negatives have contributed to 158 exhibitions since his death in 1994. This impressive figure reflects almost universal appreciation, but almost implies that everything has been seen and said about the author of the essential Kiss at the Hôtel de Ville. However, this new exhibition, after two years of preparation and with the help of his two daughters, Francine Deroudille and Annette Doisneau, aims to convey something beyond images: “a way of looking at others.”

The exhibition curators have thus opted for a thematic route that shows the different aspects of Robert Doisneau’s work while maintaining a common thread: “poetic realism,” a notion that is quickly understood upon seeing the approximately 400 prints in the exhibition. The term also refers to a cinematographic movement born in the 1930s – just like humanist photography – which is not without recalling that these photos, always impressive in their mastery of composition, have a certain capacity to tell stories. We (re)discover his closeness to writers, including his friend Jacques Prévert, with whom he shared a taste for surrealism (the Fontaine des Quatre-Saisons, the cabaret run by the Prévert brothers in the 1950s, was also located on the ground floor of the current Maillol Museum).

A stroll through the complex work of an artist so often simplified, who here rediscovers his poetic and profoundly human dimension. His amused view of childhood. His Parisian suburbs that turn from black and white to color. A visit in complete complicity to the studios of painters and sculptors; his exploration of post-war fashion and luxury during the Vogue years. So many themes that draw a social observation of an unforgiving world with which he always felt solidarity.

April 17 to October 12, 2025

MUSEE MAILLOL

59-61 rue de Grenelle 75007 Paris