April 21, 2015

Today we visited a gem of a museum, Musée Marmottan Monet, which is located in the 16th and contains the largest collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works by Claude Monet (over 300 works) in the world. It also boasts works from Degas, Renoir, Manet and many others along with hundreds of pieces of furniture and objects d’Art from the Napoleonic era. Originally the home of Jules Marmottan and then his son Paul, it was donated by Paul, along with his entire collection of art to Académie des Beaux-Arts. In 1957, Victorine Donop de Monchy gave the museum an important collection of Impressionist works that had belonged to her father, Doctor Georges de Bellio, who was a physician to Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Sisley and Renoir, and an early supporter of the Impressionist movement. In 1966, Claude Monet’s second son, Michel Monet, left the museum his own collection of his father’s work, which created the world’s largest collection of Monet paintings.

With such an extraordinary collection of work, including ‘Impression, Soleil Levant’, the painting from which the Impressionist movement took its name, one would think that the line to enter the museum would be around the block. Fortunately that is not the case. With only a handful of people, we had the place almost to ourselves. Photos are not permitted in the museum which we think is a great idea given it allows you to be with the art without the press of people vying to get the best shot. There is a tranquility to the space which gives rise to a relationship between the art and its viewer that we think would make the artists very happy. Given this we have taken the liberty of including a link which shows a very small sampling of the work on display:

Musée Marmottan Monet

The link is worth a visit, especially if you like Monet. If you decide to visit the museum, please allow at least 2 hours as it is easy to get lost in the work of not only these great artists but of the house itself.