Musee des Beaux Arts (Reims)

Musee des Beaux Arts (Reims)

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.

 

History

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.

 

Collections

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.

 

Event

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.

 

Saint-Denis Abbey

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 .

 

Museum curators

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.