Musée Marmottan Monet, a museum on rue Louis-Boilly since 1934

The Musée Marmottan Monet, a fine arts museum at 2 rue Louis-Boilly, opened to the public in 1934, beside the Jardin du Ranelagh. It grew from the bequest of the art historian Paul Marmottan, who died in 1932: his town house bought by his father Jules in 1882 and his collections went to the Académie des beaux-arts.

The collection first gathered the art of the First Empire that Paul loved: furniture by Jacob, sculpture by Canova, paintings by David, Ingres and Boilly. In 1957 Victorine Donop de Monchy gave the paintings of her father Georges de Bellio, among them Monet’s Impression, Sunrise, the canvas that named Impressionism.

In 1966 Michel Monet, the painter’s son, bequeathed his collection; Jacques Carlu built a gallery beneath the garden to house it, opened in 1970. Then came the Wildenstein illuminations, the Duhem collection and, in 1993, the bequest of Berthe Morisot’s descendants. Nine paintings stolen in 1985 were found in Corsica in 1990.

The museum holds the world’s largest collection of works by Claude Monet, with his sketchbooks, palettes and letters, and the leading collection of Berthe Morisot. It stands in the 16th arrondissement and presents a temporary exhibition each season.