Musée de la Vie Romantique

Paris - La Belle Époque

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The Museum of Romantic Life is located in the Nouvelle Athènes district of the 9th arrondissement of Paris . It is housed at 16, rue Chaptal , in the Hôtel Scheffer - Renan , the former home of the Dutch-born painter Ary Scheffer and a center of Romantic inspiration during the first part of the 19th century .

On the ground floor of the pavilion, built in 1830, the museum exhibits the memorabilia of the novelist George Sand , who came as a neighbor to visit the painter. The salons recreate her art of living with paintings, drawings, sculptures, furniture, jewelry and display objects from her home in Nohant en Berry and bequeathed in 1928 with usufruct to the City of Paris by her granddaughter, Aurore Lauth-Sand .

Upstairs, the rooms evoke the memory of Ary Scheffer and his contemporaries - and of the philosopher Ernest Renan , who became his nephew by marriage.

History of the place

The former house of the painter Ary Scheffer (1795-1858), who lived there from 1830 until his death in 1858, remained until 1982 the private property of his lateral descendants through the women. The painter's daughter, Cornélia Scheffer , wife of the surgeon René Marjolin, having had no children, left the property to her great-niece Noémi. She was the granddaughter of the painter Henry Scheffer and the daughter of Cornélie, who had herself married the writer and philosopher Ernest Renan .

After her marriage to Jean Psichari , Noémi Renan raised their four children in this house, including the youngest, Corrie, who in turn moved there with her husband, the composer Robert Siohan , whom she had married in 1921. Corrie Siohan, in agreement with her elder sister Henriette Psichari - who was the wife of the doctor and psychiatrist Gabriel Revault d'Allonnes - decided, having had no children, to entrust the "Chaptal enclosure" to the French State in 1956 so that it would become an inalienable heritage site. Their efforts were encouraged by André Malraux , Minister of Culture, and then by Jacques Chirac , Mayor of Paris.

After the death of Corrie Siohan, a first museum, called "Renan-Scheffer", opened in 1983, dependent on the City of Paris under the supervision of the Carnavalet Museum . Soon directed by Anne-Marie de Brem , this exceptional place became in 1987 the Museum of Romantic Life, after a major renovation in the style of the 19th century , led by the decorator Jacques Garcia . Thus today one can enjoy the preserved atmosphere of the bourgeois salons of New Athens in the 19th century where many painters but also writers, columnists, politicians and musicians met.

At the end of 1998, Daniel Marchesseau , general heritage curator, was appointed to manage the establishment. A further redevelopment of the two workshops dedicated to temporary exhibitions organized twice a year was carried out under the direction of decorator François-Joseph Graf in 2003. Daniel Marchesseau claimed his retirement rights inJune 2013His successor is Jérôme Farigoule, who will hand over the management of the museum to Gaëlle Rio in January 2018.

The first Ary Scheffer collection comes mainly from two deposits, from the Carnavalet Museum and the Historical Library of the City of Paris , supplemented by a few loans from the Dordrecht Museum , where the majority of the father's studio had been bequeathed by the painter's daughter in 1898.

This enabled the museum to open before receiving full ownership of the Corrie and Robert Siohan bequest in 1991. At the same time, an active policy of acquiring works of art was initiated upon the museum's opening to complete the collections.

In 1995, Pierre Bergé donated to the museum a collection of romantic memorabilia about La Malibran , George Sand, Rachel , Sarah Bernhardt and Louise Abbéma that Jacques Chazot , who died in 1993, had collected. In 2012, the friends of the museum were able to acquire a complementary collection of objects and publications about the actress Rachel.

Family archives of Ernest Renan and his son-in-law Jean Psichari , a collection of drawings by his son, Ary Renan , and a library complete the scientific apparatus of the museum which benefited from a major donation of reference works on George Sand, by the family of Georges Lubin , the recognized specialist of the writer, who joined the museum shortly after her death in 2000.

The Museum of Romantic Life has the status of a museum of France within the meaning of Law No. 2002-5 ofJanuary 4, 2002[ 1 ] .

The French State definitively transferred ownership of the property complex to the City of Paris onJanuary 1 , 2007.

The Society of Friends of the Museum was created in 1996 [ 2 ] , first chaired by Didier Wirth, then, from 2002 to the end of 2012, by Solange Thierry de Saint-Rapt. The "romantic Mondays", inaugurated by Jean d'Ormesson , literary and musical evenings organized eleven times a year, welcomed, between 1999 and 2012, many personalities. Among the writers, Marc Fumaroli , Jean-Marie Rouart , Marc Lambron , Dominique Bona , Huguette Bouchardeau , Vladimir Fédorovski , Gonzague Saint-Bris and René de Obaldia . On the piano, performers such as Marc Laforet , Jean-Marc Luisada , Alain Planès , Yves Henry , and even Alfred Brendel , and many of the most promising young performers, from the violinist Laurent Korcia to the pianists Bertrand Chamayou , Khatia Buniatishvili and Adam Laloum , not forgetting chamber music trio and quartet groups.