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 Marmottan in conjunction with those works by others that he chose to keep around him. The Marmottan collection provides insights into Monet's own work, and into the phenomenon of the Impressionists as a group of colleagues and friends who influenced each other.
The Marmottan is one of a number of museums belonging to the Institut de France. Most of the Institut's museums consist of wealthy connoisseurs' collections, displayed in their homes in order to preserve "th...