Marmottan Museum in Paris

The Marmottan Museum in Paris holds the world's most important single accumulation of the works of Claude Monet. In addition, the museum owns a variety of works by other Impressionists--such as Auguste Renoir, Berthe Morisot, and Gustave Caillebotte--and other works by late nineteenth-century artists who influenced the Impressionists--such as Eugene Delacroix and Constantin Guys. This large collection is based on two important legacies. The first was the 1957 donation of the collection of Georges de Bellio, friend and physician to many painters, by his daughter Victorine Donop de Monchy. The second was the legacy of Michel Monet, the painter's youngest and only surviving son, who bequeathed Monet's entire personal collection to the Marmottan. The Monet collection came to the museum following Michel Monet's death in 1966. In 1987, Henri Duhem, a painter and collector, supplemented the Marmottan's Impressionist holdings when he bequeathed his collection--including works by Monet and others--to the museum. The Marmottan's holdings in this area constitute a unique type of collection. Since most of the Marmottan's Impressionist works were originally held by a close friend of Monet or by Monet himself, the collection locates Monet's work in a highly personal context. The museum offers not only a great assortment of works by Monet, but works by friends and predecessors whom he admired. Works that Monet retained from various points in his career are displayed at the Marmot

at formed around the Impressionists after their first group show (1972), de Bellio's place in art history was ensured. But, in 1878, de Bellio also purchased one of the most famous of Impressionist works, Monet's Impression: Sunrise (1872), from Monet's friend and patron Ernest HoschedT. This oil sketch had become the source of the group's name when the critic Louis Leroy satirized Monet's presentation of a mere sketch, claiming that "wallpaper in its embryonic state is more labored than this seascape." It is not surprising that newspaper reviewers and the general public were slow to comprehend Monet's interest in these impressions, "freely brushed, economical sketches, executed out-of-doors" that reflected the painter's lifelong concern with conveying the qualities of light and instantaneity in his painting. Though de Bellio may have astutely guessed that the painting's value might be increased by its historic connections, it had certainly not become a highly valued article in the six years between the exhibition and the time de Bellio purchased it. Instead, it is a tribute to de Bellio's discernment that he understood his friend's aims and was able to appreciate the work's great merit. De Bellio's appreciation extend

Category: Arts - M