A museum with room to muse

July 22, 2017 -- The Musée Marmottan Monet is delightful for two reasons:  it is located in a stately home that still has antique furnishings and authentic décor, and it has a huge, modern sous sol (basement) that is air conditioned and houses a magnificent collection of Impressionist paintings, mostly by Monet.  The Marmottan is not crowded.  The only reason for the lack of crowds is that it is a private museum (owned by the French Academy of Fine Arts), and so it is not promoted so much by the State or City. 

Memorial to the writer Jean de la Fountaine in the Ranelagh gardens.

We always recommend this museum to people who ask us for recommendations.  But we haven’t been there ourselves for a few years.  In yesterday’s glorious weather, we decided to walk to the museum and back – one hour each way.  We could have taken the metro’s lines 6 and 9, but we didn’t want to go underground on such a beautiful day.

Off we went – past the Beaugrenelle center, over the Seine on the Pont de Grenelle, past the huge, round Radio France building, and uphill on the rue de Boulanvilliers until we reached the top of the hill at Place Jane Evrard.  There we turned into a park called the Jardins du Ranelagh.  The Musée Marmottan overlooks the far side of this park.

Beautiful ironwork on a front door in the 16th -- featuring two black cats!

We visited the ground floor of the old home first, then descended to the sous sol to see all the important paintings.  We finished by exploring the upper floor of the home. 

Originally, the home was a “hunting lodge,” but it looks far more refined than what we imagine when we hear the words “hunting lodge.”  Paul Marmottan bequeathed the home and his art collection to the fine arts academy in the 1930s, and then in 1957, Victorine Donop de Monchy  bequeathed a fine collection of Impressionist paintings to the museum.  That collection was extensive enough that it changed the emphasis of the museum.

Victorine’s father was a doctor who collected these paintings.  His patients included several important Impressionist painters; perhaps sometimes they paid him with paintings.

When Monet’s last heir passed away in the 1960s, he also bequeathed his collections to the Marmottan.  Then the collection of Henri Duhem and Mary Sergeant were given to the museum by their daughter, Nelly.

La Gare restaurant at 19 Chausee de la Muette, across the park from the Marmottan museum.

Then came the collection donated by Daniel Wildstein in 1980.

As a result of the creation of the Denis and Annie Rouart Foundation in the 1990s, the museum has acquired even more important works by Berthe Morisot, Edouard Manet, Edgar Degas and Henri Rouart.

So there is much to see at the Marmottan, and you can see it all peacefully, at your own pace, away from the crowds.

After our museum visit, we walked back through the park to the attractive restaurant called La Gare, because it is in a former train station.  It has a huge outdoor dining area where the tracks used to enter the station. 

A Tauck river cruise boat docked where Viking River Cruises usually is, by the Pont de Grenelle.

This was a lovely place to dine on a beautiful day, back away from the automobile traffic in a garden-like setting.  But the food was merely okay or just barely good.  We’d do it again just to be able to sit in that beautiful place on a lovely day, but we wouldn’t go back there for the food.

The mid-afternoon down-hill walk home was long and charming, and we had time to shop for groceries in the evening.  We must prepare!  Dan and the granddaughters return from Spain and Italy today!