In 1919, Marie Grobet, née Labadié, bequeathed her family’s beautiful mansion to the city of Marseille, and the collections that housed it, built up over several decades, to a charming 19th-century mansion.

The Spirit of an Era is the fruit of an exceptional gift.

The collections on display are an admirable example of the artistic eclecticism of a family of “enlightened” amateurs from that era. It reflects the tastes of a refined bourgeois society, seduced by all forms of art and constitutes a collection of works of prime importance. 18th century reception room and furniture, living and painting floor, sculptures, ceramics, furniture, tapestries, collections of musical instruments, stained glass windows. Although the 18th century occupies a privileged place in the collections, with notably the Louis XV salon, the High Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the 19th century still being represented with sets made up of works of prime importance.

The Grobet Labadié museum offers an immersive dive into the history of taste at the beginning of the 20th century. It embodies a nineteenth-century aesthetic of which we are the heirs, grounded in an encyclopedic view of a burgeoning history of art. Marseilles and art and heritage lovers particularly appreciate it because it is indisputably in Marseille, what is the Frick collection in New York, the Wallace collection in London and the Musée Jacquemart-André in Paris.

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