Musée Cognacq-Jay, the 18th century at the Hôtel Donon since 1929

The Musée Cognacq-Jay was opened on 4 June 1929 on the boulevard des Capucines by President Gaston Doumergue. It shows the collection of 18th-century art left to the City of Paris by Ernest Cognacq, who died on 21 February 1928, founder of La Samaritaine with his wife Marie-Louise Jaÿ.

The couple gathered their works between 1895 and 1925: paintings by Largillierre, Chardin, Boucher, Greuze, Fragonard and Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, pastels by Quentin de La Tour, drawings by Watteau, sculpture by Houdon and Clodion. Rembrandt’s Balaam’s Ass, painted in 1626, and Tiepolo’s Banquet of Cleopatra complete the whole.

On 27 June 1988 the museum closed on the boulevard des Capucines. It reopened on 18 December 1990 in the Marais, at the Hôtel de Donon, a late 16th-century mansion restored for the purpose, whose great attic recalls the hull of an upturned ship. Christian Lacroix was given carte blanche there in 2015.

At 8 rue Elzévir, in the 3rd arrondissement, each panelled room is set with period furniture: Saxon porcelain, snuffboxes, sweetmeat boxes and toilet sets. Two Canalettos, works by Guardi and three canvases by Hubert Robert extend the refined taste of the Enlightenment.