Marmottan Monet Museum | Premium Ticket

In a few words

The Musée Marmottan Monet, former hunting lodge of Christophe Edmond Kellermann, duke of Valmy, is acquired in 1882 by Jules Marmottan. His son Paul sets his residence and extend his new home to show his art collection and significant acquisitions from First Empire. The museum hosts today the largest collection of Claude Monet and Berthe Morisot's paintings.

In detail

This beautiful Empire-style townhouse of Paul Marmottan is open today as the musée Marmottan Monet. In addition to its various and rich collections, it is the home of the largest collection of Claude Monet and Berthe Morisot's paintings. Great center of Impressionism, the museum hosts master pieces of Delacroix, Boudin, Manet, Degas, Caillebotte, Sisley, Pissarro, Gauguin, even Rodin and Chagall. It has also become a paramount site for the study of ancient manuscripts.

At his death in 1932, Marmottan bequeathed his home to a cultural institution in order to preserve it and open it to the public, a task he entrusted to the Académie des Beaux-Arts, which inherited the building and its collections. The townhouse opens to the public in 1934 as the Musée Marmottan. Soon the aura of the Académie des Beaux-Arts attracted new donations and bequests. The museum enriched its collections and opened a new chapter in its history.

In 1957, the Musée Marmottan Monet receives a donation made by Victorine and Eugène Donop de Monchy, inherited by her father Georges de Bellio, doctor of Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Sisley and Renoir, who was a true impressionist supporter and amateur.

Thanks to Michel Monet, the Impressionist collection would soon become one of the museum’s great riches. The younger son of Claude Monet, and the only son after the death of his brother Jean in 1914, he was his sole descendant, heir to the house in Giverny and all the works it contained, when the painter died in 1926. He thus received the paintings and drawings by masters and friends that his father had collected, including Eugène Delacroix, Eugène Boudin, Johan Barthold Jongkind, Gustave Caillebotte, Renoir, and Morisot. Above all, Michel inherited his father’s late works. Most of these were part of an ensemble of monumental canvases of water lilies.

In 1966, over a hundred Monets, including a unique ensemble of large-format Water Lilies, were added to the institution’s collection. Since the salons of Paul Marmottan’s townhouse were too small to show works on such a scale, a new room was specially designed under the garden. In 1970, these canvases, most of which had never been shown, were put on display. They form the world’s biggest collection of works by Claude Monet. The home of Paul Marmottan had grown and was now also the home of the father of Impressionism. The museum became known as the Musée Marmottan Monet.

Les œuvres réunies par Henri Duhem et son épouse Mary Sergeant viennent admirablement compléter ce fonds en 1987 grâce à la générosité de leur fille Nelly Duhem. Peintre et compagnon d’armes des post-impressionnistes, Henri Duhem fut aussi un collectionneur passionné rassemblant les œuvres de ses contemporains.

Several other descendants of artists followed Michel Monet’s example. In 1985, Nelly Sergeant-Duhem, adopted daughter of the Post- Impressionist painter Henri Duhem, donated a large number of works to the museum, including Taking a Walk in Argenteuil by Monet and Bunch of Flowers by Paul Gauguin.

Likewise, the Rouart family bequeathed to the museum the world’s leading collection of works by their forebear, Berthe Morisot.

Many other benefactors have enriched the museum since its creation. In 1981, Daniel Wildenstein offered the collection of illuminations that his father, Georges, had begun putting together at the age of sixteen.