Location: 8 Rue Chanzy
Tel. +33 326 35 36 00
Musee des Beaux Arts or Museum of Fine Arts was founded in 1794 during turbulent years of the French Revolution. Mob of revolutionaries looted many mansions, churches and palaces. Newly established officials ordered seizure of numerous examples of art from private hands and began collecting them in Reims Town Hall. Over a course of the 19th century Reims collection grew in size and importance. In 1908 city officials decided to construct a separate building for the art collection. They decided to use 18th century buildings of the former Abbey of Saint Denis to house their. New Museum of Fine Arts was inaugurated on October 19, 1913. Musee des Beaux Arts of Reims contains a rich collection of art that dates back as late as 15th century. One of the most famous paintings is The Death of Marat by David.
Antoine Ferrand de Monthelon, founder of the drawing school,
bequeathed his collection to the city of Reims in 1752. Nicolas Bergeat
organized the collection of works of art from Catholic institutions
located in Reims and the first deposit was recorded on 10 Vendémiaire
Year II in the former Magneuses hospice. The Museum of Fine Arts was
founded in 1794 from revolutionary seizures and was then installed in
the town hall. The opening to the public and the first regulations are
from 11 germinal year VIII: "every quintidis from nine o'clock to noon".
Throughout the 19th century, the collections were supplemented by
purchases and legacies, so much so that in 1908 the city of Reims
decided to acquire an independent building to house the museum.
The
choice is directed towards the old abbey of Saint-Denis, it is a
building whose construction began in the ninth century on the order of
Fulk the Venerable, it replaced an old cemetery. The abbey which
suffered many insults since the Revolution, seat of the District
Directory but also warehouse for the works of art of the sold churches,
barracks for the Russian occupation troops in 1814 then in 1815. became
the major seminary in 1822, also confiscated in 1906 after the law
separating Church and State, the museum was transferred there to the
buildings of the former Saint-Denis abbey. Renovated since then, the
museum partly corresponds to the 18th century abbey palace, remodeled in
the 19th century.
President Poincaré inaugurated the museum on
October 19, 1913. During the First World War, it was hit while
collections were there. In the 2010s, a museum renovation project
emerged.
Charles Loriquet, Eugène Courmeaux then Henri Jadart
were curators of the Museum before the First World War, then Paul Jamot
from 1927 to 1939 and Régine Pernoud in 1947.
The city of Reims
announced on July 15, 2018, that the Portuguese firm of Francisco Aires
Mateus, from Lisbon, will be in charge of the rehabilitation and
extension project of the current Museum of Fine Arts. The implementation
of the latter, at a total cost of 45.3 million euros, will be deployed
over several years. The closure of the museum to the public on September
22, 2019 is followed by the phase of studies, archaeological excavations
and the moving of the works to the new outsourced reserves until the end
of 2020, then years of work, before a reopening scheduled for 2025. The
museum will continue its activities with a program outside the walls and
with numerous loans and deposits of works in France and abroad.
The museum preserves above all paintings, in particular from the
Flemish and Dutch and especially French schools, and both ancient and
modern art.
We find, for the painting of the northern schools
(Flanders, Holland and Germany), works by Marinus van Reymerswaele
(Saint Jerome), Hendrick van Balen, Roelandt Savery, Jacob Jordaens
(Satyr), Bartholomeus van der Helst, Jacob van Loo , Gerard Seghers
(Christ after the Flagellation), David Teniers the Younger (Village
Festival), Nicolas Maes, Melchior d'Hondecoeter, Matthias Withoos,
Adriaen van der Werff, Ferdinand Elle, among others.
Italian painting
is present through the paintings of Giovanni Battista Moroni and
Bartolomeo Manfredi (Departure of young Tobie).
The French school is
the best represented, especially for the 17th century, with works by
Nicolas Poussin (Landscape with the woman washing her feet, another
version of this painting is in the Condé de Chantilly museum), Simon
Vouet ( The Assumption of the Virgin), the Le Nain Brothers, from the
Reims region and who are present with a fine set of paintings including
Venus in the forge of Vulcan and The Tricheurs, Claude Vignon, Jacques
Blanchard, Philippe de Champaigne ( The Habert de Montmor Children),
Pierre Mignard, Laurent de La Hyre, Sébastien Bourdon, Gaspard Dughet,
Charles Le Brun, Jean Jouvenet etc. The 18th century followed, with
paintings by François Desportes (Animal Combat), François Boucher
(L'Odalisque), Anne Vallayer-Coster and Jacques Louis David (La Mort de
Marat, replica of the Brussels painting) among others.
The 19th
century features prominently in the museum's collections, including 27
canvases by Camille Corot from various donations such as that of Henry
Vasnier, that of Jean-Pierre Lundy, which makes it the second largest
collection in the world of works by Corot. after that of the Louvre, but
also paintings by Eugène Delacroix, Richard Parkes Bonington (L'Espace),
Théodore Chassériau, Jean-François Millet (Portrait of an anonymous
man), Théodore Rousseau, Johan Barthold Jongkind, Gustave Courbet,
Honoré Daumier, Eugène Boudin, Claude Monet (Ravine of the Creuse at
sunset, 1889 and The Rocks of Belle-Isle), Camille Pissarro, Alfred
Sisley, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Henri
Fantin-Latour, Eugène Carrière, Paul Gauguin (Still Life with Maori
Statuette, around 1890), Emile Bernard and Édouard Vuillard
(L'Essayage).
For the 20th century, there are paintings by Douanier
Rousseau (Lion's Head, acquired in 2011), Pierre Bonnard, Henri Matisse
(Reader in a purple dress), Raoul Dufy, Albert Marquet, Charles Camoin
(The Tuileries Basin, 1902), René Aubert (Two philosophers), Jean Puy,
Louis Marcoussis and Vieira da Silva. Works by Giorgio de Chirico and
Léonard Foujita have been deposited in the museum by the National Museum
of Modern Art.
The Musée des Beaux-Arts also preserves and presents
sculptures, drawings (including thirteen exceptional portraits painted
on paper by Lucas Cranach the Younger and presented alternately in a
specially equipped room), a series of nine tempera canvases (around 1500
) of the old hospices of Reims, engravings, furniture and works of art,
collections which are all characteristic of the greatest movements of
art of the European schools from the 16th to the 20th century and
classified according to a coherence that is both chronological and
thematic.
From March 25 to April 4, 2016: A look at ... Lucas Cranach the Younger: Attributed to Albert Dürer then to Hans Holbein during the 19th century, then finally to Lucas Cranach the Elder and Lucas Cranach the Younger, in the 20th century, the research continues in the 21st century, making it possible to refine and clarify the origin and authorship of the drawings from the Reims School of Drawing. Cranach the Younger is therefore the author of these works which for centuries now have made the reputation of our Museum of Fine Arts. It was important for the Museum's Curatorial Department to report on the state of these latest discoveries established on the occasion of the 2015 retrospective on the artist, in Lutherstadt Wittenberg (Germany) by the greatest specialists, in consultation with our team. In addition to the conservation of the works, research on them is one of the missions of the scientific team of the museum, the transmission being another. This is the interest of the Regard sur… exhibitions, which allow, among other things, a better understanding of our collections. We will continue our work on this exceptional corpus for its quality and rarity. We will try to confirm or find the identification of the personalities represented, to explain the technical and artistic relationship between drawing and painting. As part of its new redevelopment project, the team at the Museum of Fine Arts should launch a study on the time and nature of lighting, as well as their presentation. It will make every effort to offer the public a permanent exhibition of the thirteen portraits.
Certain entities of the former Saint-Denis abbey are listed as historical monuments. The entrance building on the street is listed as a historic monument by decree of July 19, 1921. The facade at the end of the courtyard with its gallery and the corresponding roof as well as the staircase of honor are listed by decree of October 25, 1971 .
1794-1806: Nicolas Bergeat,
1838-1846: Louis Paris,
1846-1849:
Eugene Courmeaux,
1849-1853: Etienne Maubeauge,
1853-1886: Charles
Loriquet,
1887-1895: Eugene Courmeaux,
1895-1915: Henri Jadart,
1914-1927: Jean-Baptiste Langlet,
1927-1937: Louis Mennecier,
1937-1947: Eugene Dourcy,
1947-1949: Regine Pernoud,
1949-1961:
Olga Popovitch,
1961-1989: François Pomarede,
1991-1996: Véronique
Alemany-Dessaint,
1996-1999: Catherine Delot
1999-2015: David
Liot,
Since 2015: Catherine Delot.