It's morning and the Musee d'Orsay is closed, but inside staff are as busy as on any other day.
Director Guy Cogeval is taking advantage of the absence of visitors to oversee the final stages of taking down the remaining masterpieces coming to Canberra as part of the National Gallery of Australia's Masterpieces from Paris: Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne and beyond.
He points to empty spaces on the walls which will soon be covered by works taken out of storage, some which have not been seen in decades.
Orange stickers denote the paintings which are the last to be removed and crated next week.
There is Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night, Portrait of Of Eugene Boch and Portrait of the Artist, there is Paul Cezanne's The Bathers and Paul Gauguin's Portrait of the Artist with Yellow Christ, all with an incongruous orange sticker. Gauguin's Tahitian Women is already on the floor. These are among the 114 paintings, examples of some of the finest Post-Impressionism, that will be on display over four months in Canberra from December 4 before touring Tokyo and San Francisco.
Mr Cogeval said it was better for the collection to go on an international tour than be kept in storage while the Musee d'Orsay underwent a year-long renovation project that would allow its treasures to be displayed to much greater effect.
''It's an historic exhibition.'' MrCogeval said.
''We realise what we'll miss for a year but it's worth it because as President Sarkozy has said in his essay, works of art should travel and go to places they very rarely go.
''And Canberra is a very good example because it takes so many hours by plane to go to Canberra.
''And for people from Canberra who do come to Europe, they don't necessarily get the chance to see these pieces.''
Visitors to the exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia will probably see the paintings displayed in a far better manner, and without the huge crowds, than at the Musee d'Orsay.
Thousands of people people regularly make their way through the old train station which was converted in the early 1980s by Italian architect Gae Aulenti into a museum for art from the second half of the 19th century and from the early 20th century.
Mr Cogeval said the renovations would change the way Ms Aulenti had structured the museum, particularly the poor lighting.
''I want to emphasise the importance of each work. In here they all look the same, they don't look like masterpieces. Can you imagine this?'' he said indicating Edgar Degas' Dance Class.
''The paintings look shabby, there is no difference between the red, the blue, the green,'' he said.
The main reason for this is the museum's reliance on volatile indirect lighting.
''There are no direct projectors on the walls, which seems unbelievable but that was the fashion in the 1980s but which is now very old fashioned,'' he said.
''When the sky is dark you don't see anything inside the galleries.''
And at times there is too much light. Pointing to Whistler's Mother, the famous ''arrangement in black and grey'' by American-born painter James McNeill Whistler, Mr Cogeval squints.
''You can't look at it because you have light coming from outside, you have to look at it like this,'' he said, shading his eyes.
Mr Cogeval said Australians should take advantage of the exhibition as the Musee d'Orsay's collection was ''one of the few collections that can exemplify Post-Impressionism, if not the only one''.