By Sarah Belmont 

This fall, visitors arriving in Paris via Gare de l’Est, will find Vincent van Gogh’s Irises (1889) waiting outside the station, like a giant bouquet. Created soon after Van Gogh entered the asylum at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, in the South of France, it was shown at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris, prompting his brother Theo to write that it ‘strikes the eye from afar.’ That observation proves prophetic today: enlarged to architectural proportions, the flowers are impossible to miss. To fit across two building façades, the reproduction has been cropped, echoing Van Gogh’s own radical approach to composition. His irises push beyond the frame, and now, beyond the canvas.

Getty’s collection beyond the museum walls

It’s thanks to Getty, the world’s largest cultural and philanthropic organization dedicated to the visual arts, that Paris’s public spaces are being treated to art on a grand scale. Bringing to life its mission and commitment to ‘all for art,’ the American institution, founded in 1953 by businessman and art collector J. Paul Getty, is taking huge reproductions of six iconic artworks from its collection and installing them at six different locations across the City of Light. ‘This exciting project reflects Getty’s commitment to sharing art beyond the museum’s walls and building meaningful partnerships around the world,’ explains Katherine E. Fleming, President and CEO of Getty.

The initiative, a collaboration with the artistic consulting and cultural management agency L’Art dans la Ville, coincides with the 250th anniversary of Franco-American friendship, a relationship in which cultural exchange has long played a central role. Getty’s own ties to France are part of that broader story. French art is strongly represented in its collection, and the institution maintains long-standing partnerships and collaborations with the Château de Versailles, Musee d’Orsay, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the printing house Idem Paris, and numerous French museums and cultural organizations. Recently, Getty renewed its cooperation agreement with the Consulate General of France in Los Angeles and Villa Albertine through 2028, with the goal of promoting French programming at Getty and facilitating exchange between the three institutions.

On the streets of Paris, Getty’s outdoor installations appear in six locations. Each reproduction carries a QR code that will take you to information about the whole project and invite you to dive deeper into the individual artwork. Most of the artists selected are French – some instantly recognizable, others newly celebrated through major exhibitions. Alongside Van Gogh’s Irises, which Fleming describes as ‘perhaps Getty’s best-known painting,’ are works by Édouard Manet, Paul Cézanne, and Gustave Caillebotte. Also included, is Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s Spring (1894), a work that she notes, serves as a nice nod to Getty’s antiquities collection. Fleming also explains that the selection of the sites was equally intentional, and rather than focusing exclusively on tourist-heavy areas, Getty selected neighborhoods across the city. ‘We wanted a mix of locations that really dig into the city and bring new eyes and interest to Getty’s collection.’

From Van Gogh’s postman to a Roman procession

Whether you are walking, biking, or driving from Gare de l’Est, make your way toward the Hôtel de Ville, where another Van Gogh awaits you: Portrait of Joseph Roulin (1888). After the riot of color at the station, this one comes as a welcome change of mood: a black-and-white portrait of the postman the artist befriended in Arles, describing him as, ‘A good soul and so wise and so full of feeling and so trustful.’ Van Gogh’s energetic lines make the portrait vibrate, while the nervous cross-hatching in the background creates a sense of movement, urging you on.

Next stop: Notre-Dame. Here, Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s Spring brings an entirely different atmosphere. Barefoot young women and children crowned with flowers lead a procession through an imagined ancient Rome, surrounded by marble, poppies, daffodils, and musicians. This cascade of figures spilling across the composition, from the spectators leaning over balconies and rooftops to the crowd below, mirrors the vibrancy of one of the busiest neighborhoods in Paris.

Manet’s Parisienne and Cézanne’s apples

Near the Louvre, which Getty has collaborated with on numerous occasions, Manet’s Jeanne (Spring) (1881) offers another kind of encounter. Jeanne Demarsy, an aspiring actress, clad in an elegant floral ensemble embodies the fashionable 19th-century Parisienne. Hats off to the painter who assembled her outfit himself. She is headed west, parasol in hand, inviting you to join her on her stroll.

Move south, to the Carrefour de la Croix-Rouge, in the Sèvres-Babylone area, near Le Bon Marché – the most prestigious department store on the Left Bank, where Jeanne could easily have bought her dress. Look up! There is Cézanne’s Still Life with Apples (1893-1894). During the last 30 years of his life, the master from Aix-en-Provence kept going back to the same objects – a green vase, a rum bottle, a ginger pot, and apples – using them to experiment with shape, color, and light. He once famously declared that he wanted to ‘astonish Paris with an apple.’ More than a century later, and with the help of Getty, he may do just that.

Seeing Paris through Caillebotte’s eyes

Finally, make your way west to Auteuil, where Caillebotte’s Young Man at His Window (1876) turns the very act of looking at Paris into a work of art. The scene is intimate and observational: a man standing at a window, looking out at the city below. This work was featured in ‘Gustave Caillebotte: Painting Men’, co-organized by Getty and the Musée d’Orsay, which began its tour at the Paris venue in 2024, traveling on to LA, before completing its journey in Chicago.

It is a fitting image for this project. After all, the passerby is invited to look again – at art, at Paris, and perhaps at the familiar streets we normally hurry through without seeing. (And if it leaves you wanting to see more, follow the Impressionists beyond Paris, toward Normandy, where so many of them found the landscapes that would transform modern painting.)

Strolling through the city, there’s no ticket to book, no schedule to follow, no threshold to cross…All that’s left to do, is dive headfirst – or rather, head-up – into this open-air museum.