Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen

Musée des beaux-arts de Rouen

The Musée des beaux-arts de Rouen
Established	1801
Location	Esplanade Marcel-Duchamp 76000 Rouen, Normandy, France
Type	Art museum
Visitors	315,000 (2011)
Director	Sylvain Amic
Curator	Sylvain Amic
Website	rouen-musees.com

The musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen is an art museum in Rouen, Normandy, France. Founded in 1801 by Napoleon I, its current building was built between 1880 and 1888 and underwent complete renovation in 1994. It houses painting, sculpture, drawing and decorative art collections.

History

Main façade of the Museum

Built between 1877 and 1888 on a design by architect Louis Sauvageot, the museum features a collection of paintings, sculptures, drawings and objets d'art from the Renaissance to the present age, including a rare collection of Russian icons from the 15th to the beginning of the 19th century. The museum's exceptional Depeaux collection, consisting in paintings donation in 1909, places it at the forefront of French provincial museums for Impressionism.

The drawings exhibition room houses over 8000 pieces spanning from the Renaissance to the 20th century. The museum also hosts temporary exhibitions as well as odd contemporary art exhibitions. In 2006, the museum offered eight exhibitions, including the "Masterpieces of Florence Museums", which raised the number of visitors from 87,000 to 154,000. Permanent collections are exhibited in 60 rooms. The museum receives some funding from sponsorship. In 2007, its acquisition budget was €150 000 a year. The present director is Laurent Salomé.

Paintings

Members of the Rouen School, Salon des Artistes Rouennais, musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen, Robert Antoine Pinchon (centre), 1934

The painting collection is of particular interest : every European school is represented, from the 15th to the 21st century. Among the most important painters whose work is featured in the museum one can find :

• for 16th-century painting painters like Perugino, Gérard David, François Clouet, Veronese, Jacopo Bassano and Annibale Carracci.
• for the 17th century works by Rubens, Van Dyck, Caravaggio, Guercino, Luca Giordano, Diego Velázquez, Jusepe de Ribera, Philippe de Champaigne, Simon Vouet, Pierre Mignard, Laurent de La Hyre, Nicolas Poussin, Eustache Le Sueur and John Michael Wright.
• for the 18th century Hyacinthe Rigaud, Fragonard, François Boucher, Francesco Guardi, Pietro Longhi, Hubert Robert and Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun.
• 19th and 20th-century art is particularly well represented with many masterpieces and an impressive impressionnist collection. Paintings by David, Ingres, Géricault, Delacroix, Édouard Joseph Dantan, Corot, Gustave Moreau, Caillebotte, Sisley, Renoir, Pissarro, Carrière, Degas, and Monet are featured for this period. Twentieth-century painting includes paintings by Raoul Dufy, André Derain, Édouard Vuillard, Amedeo Modigliani, Jacques Villon, Marcel Duchamp, Jean Dubuffet, and Robert Antoine Pinchon.

Selected works

• 
  Gérard David, The Virgin among the Virgins
• 
  François Clouet, Diana bathing
• 
  Caravaggio, Christ at the Column
• 
  Diego Velázquez, Democritus
• 
  Théodore Géricault, Capture of a horse
• 
  Charles Marie Bouton, Chapelle du Calvaire dans l'église Saint-Roch
• 
  Théodore Géricault, Cheval arabe gris-blanc
• 
  Claude Monet, Rue Saint-Denis
• 
  Alfred Sisley, L'Inondation à Port-Marly
• 
  Amedeo Modigliani, Paul Alexandre devant un vitrage
• 
  Robert Antoine Pinchon, Le Pont aux Anglais, soleil couchant, 1905. Former collection François Depeaux
• 
  Robert Antoine Pinchon, before 1909, Péniche dans la brume, oil on canvas, 54 x 73 cm, donation François Depeaux, 1909

Sculptures

The Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen houses a lost statue by Pierre Paul Puget. This statue of Hercules slaying the Hydra of Lerna was originally in the castle of Vaudreuil, and was discovered, in 1882, by Adolphe-André Porée on the grounds of the Biéville-Beuville castle.