The Museum of Fine Arts

The Musée des Beaux-Arts, the oldest of Marseille’s museums, is one of the 15 museums that the Consulate created in 1801 in the major cities of France.

Under the second empire to offer it and the Museum spaces worthy of these collections, the city of Marseille had plans to build the Longchamp palace, which was inaugurated in 1869. This monument dedicated to the glory of arts and science commemorates, with its majestic Central Fountain, the arrival in the city of the waters of the Durance Canal. The museum’s collection was built in the early years of the revolution from works seized from churches and from the property of emigrants.

In 1802, the State sent to the museums it had just created a selection of masterpieces illustrating the great schools of painting of Italy, France and Northern Europe. Throughout the nineteenth century, this group was extended from paintings that the State continued to send regularly. The acquisitions, legacies and donations that have been made during the 2 centuries of its existence have given the museum its current face. Thus, the Marseille Museum of Fine Arts can present a beautiful ensemble of the greatest Italian and French masters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with works by Lavinia Fontana, Gerchin, Lanfranco, Pannini for Italy or Champaigne, Vouet, Lesueur, Greuze, Vernet, Hubert Robert or David for France. Northern schools are represented by paintings by Jordaens, Stomer, and one of Rubens’ great masterpieces, the wild boar hunt.

The presentation of the rich and dynamic Provençal homes of the 17th and 18th centuries is one of the particularities of the Marseille Museum of Fine Arts. The works of Caravagesque painter Louis Finson, Jean Daret, Nicolas Mignard and Michel Serre recall the dynamism of the province which, for 2 centuries, was able to attract artists from Northern and Southern Europe.

Finally, there is an exceptional collection of paintings, sculptures and drawings by the greatest French Baroque artist, Pierre Puget, born in Marseille in 1620. The 19th century French school is one of the highlights of the collection. Along with the greatest masters, Courbet, Corot, Daubigny, Millet and Puvis de Chavanne are representatives of the Marseille School such as Loubon, Guigou and Ziem who will impose their original vision of the luminous landscapes of the south.

Rodin’s masterpiece given by the Sculptor to the museum, the bust of the middle-of-the-road celebrities or Daumier’s ratapoil are the most famous works of the 19th century sculpture gallery The Musée des Beaux-Arts maintains an important drawing collection from the 17th to the 19th centuries, the art and fashion exhibition held at the old charity from November 2018 to February 2019 was an opportunity to present the most beautiful 18th century leaves that, for the most part, had never been have been exposed.