The Museum of Romantic Life is located in the New Athens district of the 9th arrondissement of Paris. It is located at 16, rue Chaptal, in the Scheffer – Renan hotel, the former residence 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 memories of the novelist George Sand, who came to visit the painter as a neighbor. The salons restore his art of living there with paintings, drawings, sculptures, furniture, jewelry and showcase objects from his home in Nohant en Berry.
The Museum displays on the first floor numerous mementos of the romantic literary figure George Sand, including family portraits, household possessions, pieces of jewelry and memorabilia including plaster casts by Clésinger of the writer’s sensuous right arm and Chopin’s delicate left hand, plus a number of her own unique and rare watercolours called “dendrites”. On the second floor, one can admire a number of Romantic canvases, sculptures and objets d’art. The rooms upstairs evoke the memory of Ary Scheffer as of his contemporaries and of the philosopher Ernest Renan.
In the 19th century, a construction fever took hold of Paris, in the midst of a population explosion. On the first foothills of the Montmartre hill, orchards and market gardens did not resist the appetite of speculators for long. From 1820, they gave way to housing estates where renowned architects created beautiful residences, apartment buildings, artists’ studios.
Built by contractor Wormser, this characteristic house from the Restoration period has two raised living floors under an Italian roof. In the garden soon run trellises and wisteria. Opposite the house, Ary Scheffer had two glass-roofed studios built, facing north, on either side of the paved courtyard: one for use as a living room, the other as a workshop.
The property remained in private hands and passed by descent until 1982 when it became a museum, under the name of “Musée Renan-Scheffer”. It is one of the City of Paris’ three literary museums, along with the Maison de Balzac and the Maison de Victor Hugo.
The Museum displays on the first floor numerous mementos of the romantic literary figure George Sand, including family portraits, household possessions, pieces of jewelry and memorabilia including plaster casts by Clésinger of the writer’s sensuous right arm and Chopin’s delicate left hand, plus a number of her own unique and rare watercolours called “dendrites”.
History
Arrived in Paris in 1811, Ary Scheffer (1795-1858), painter of Dutch origin, settled in July 1830 in the fashionable district of “New Athens” at n° 7 rue Chaptal (current n° 16). By taking up residence in this “new republic of arts and letters”, Ary Scheffer, drawing teacher for the children of the Duke of Orléans since 1822, a worthy representative of the romantic school, affirms his success. His residence experienced intense artistic, political and literary activity for thirty years.
In the studio-salon, Scheffer, a renowned portrait painter under the July Monarchy, receives the artistic and intellectual Tout-Paris. Delacroix comes as a neighbor, like Chopin who plays willingly on the Pleyel piano. They find Liszt and Marie d’Agoult, but also Rossini, Tourgueniev, Dickens or Pauline Viardot.
The workshop, which matches it in front of a delicious jumble of mock oranges and rosebushes, was used by Ary Scheffer and his younger brother Henry, also a painter. Théodore Rousseau completed the Descent of the Cowsrue Chaptal: this painting having been refused at the Salon of 1835, Ary Scheffer showed it at the same time as paintings by his friends Paul Huet and Jules Dupré, thus establishing an exhibition of those refused. It also housed in this workshop part of the collections of the family of King Louis-Philippe when they left France for exile in 1848.
Decorated with a garden and later a greenhouse, this property that Ary Scheffer rented for nearly thirty years, was bought on his death in 1858 by his only daughter Cornélia Scheffer-Marjolin who from then on preserved the setting where he worked his father. She organized a year later a retrospective of the work of the master, 26 boulevard des Italiens in Paris. With her husband, doctor René Marjolin, she received rue Chaptal personalities such as Henri Martin, Ivan Tourgueniev or Charles Gounod. The workshops, converted on their own initiative into an emergency hospital under the Commune in 1870-1871, then served as exhibition rooms for Scheffer’s main works.
In 1899 Cornélia Scheffer-Marjolin died, bequeathing her father’s paintings to her hometown, Dordrecht in the Netherlands. The property in rue Chaptal went to Noémi Renan-Psichari (grand-niece of Scheffer), who then installed a large living room and a library devoted to the works of her father Ernest Renan in the first studio while she rented the second to artists.
It is in this studio-living room that Noémi Renan-Psichari, then his daughter Corrie Psichari-Siohan continued in the 20th century to welcome the world of arts and letters. Anatole France or Puvis de Chavannes during the Belle Époque, Maurice Denis in the 1920s, or more recently André Malraux took the same shady alley as Chopin, Delacroix and Pauline Viardot to come to the studio in rue Chaptal.
In 1956, the house was sold to the State for a symbolic sum, so that a cultural institution could be established there. After hosting a university teaching and research center devoted to the study of sounds and colors under the direction of their cousin Olivier Revault d’Allonnes, the Siohan couple took steps in 1980 to create in the former residence of the painter “a cultural institution with a dominant museography”. In 1982, the State handed over the management of the building to the city of Paris, which then opened an annex to the Carnavalet museum under the name of “Renan-Scheffer Museum”. Shortly after, a new museographic program was implemented, highlighting in the buildings renovated under the direction of Jacques Garcia, many memories of George Sand.
In 1987, the museum took the name of “museum of romantic life”. After the death of Corrie Siohan, a first museum, called “Renan-Scheffer”, was opened in 1983, depending on the City of Paris under the supervision of the Carnavalet museum. Soon directed by Anne-Marie de Brem, this exceptional place became the Museum of Romantic Life in 1987, after a major renovation in the style of the 19th century, led by the decorator Jacques Garcia. So today we can taste the preserved atmosphere of the bourgeois salons of New Athens in the 19th century where many painters but also writers, chroniclers, politicians and musicians met.
At the end of 1998, Daniel Marchesseau, general heritage curator, was appointed to the management of the establishment. An additional reorganization of the two workshops devoted to temporary exhibitions organized twice a year, was carried out under the direction of the decorator François-Joseph Graf in 2003. Daniel Marchesseau asserted his rights to retirement inJune 2013. His designated successor is Jérôme Farigoule.
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 most of the work had been bequeathed by the painter’s daughter in 1898. father’s workshop. The museum was able to open before receiving full ownership in 1991 of the legacy of Corrie and Robert Siohan. At the same time, an active policy of acquiring works of art was initiated as soon as the museum opened to complete the collections.
In 1995, Pierre Bergé gave the museum a set of romantic memories around 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 an additional set of objects and publications around the actress Rachel.
Family archives of Ernest Renan and his son-in-law Jean Psichari, a fund of drawings by his son, Ary Renan, and a library complete the scientific apparatus of the museum, which has benefited from a major donation of reference works around George Sand, by the family of Georges Lubin, the recognized specialist on the writer, who entered the museum shortly after his death in 2000.
After an extensive renovation conducted by Jacques Garcia under the direction of Anne-Marie de Brem, it reopened in 1987 as “Musée de la Vie romantique”. Daniel Marchesseau, conservateur général du Patrimoine, was appointed director in November 1998. For 13 years, he developed an ambitious program of exhibitions and acquisitions. Attendance has widely grown, from 18.000 visitors a year (1998) to 145.000 in 2010. He retired in winter 2013. His successor, Jérôme Farigoule, was appointed in September 2013.
The Museum of Romantic Life has the status of Museum of France within the meaning of Law No. 2002-5 of the January 4, 2002. The French State definitively transferred ownership of the property complex to the City of Paris on January 1, 2007.
Exhibitions
The Musée de la Vie Romantique is located in the house of the painter Ary Scheffer, built in 1830. Situated in Pigalle, in the Nouvelle Athènes district, the museum recreates a harmonious historical setting evoking the romantic period. The ground floor is devoted to George Sand and includes portraits, furniture, and jewellery from the 18th and 19th centuries. On the first floor, contemporary works are exhibited around the paintings of Ary Scheffer. An exhibition, and concerts, readings and activities for children are programmed. In the garden of the museum, the tearoom Rose Bakery is a delightfully tranquil spot and serves delicious snacks.
The Museum displays on the first floor numerous mementos of the romantic literary figure George Sand, including family portraits, household possessions, pieces of jewelry and memorabilia including plaster casts by Clésinger of the writer’s sensuous right arm and Chopin’s delicate left hand, plus a number of her own unique and rare watercolours called “dendrites”.
On the second floor, one can admire a number of Romantic canvases, sculptures and objets d’art, include:
Paintings by Ary Scheffer include portraits of Pauline Viardot, Queen Marie-Amélie, Princesse de Joinville, Princesse Marie d’Orléans, as well as oils of The Giaour (after Lord Byron), Faust and Marguerite (after Goethe), Effie and Jeanie Deans after The Heart of Midlothian by Walter Scott.
Works by his contemporaries include François Bouchot (Maria Malibran), François Debon, Charles Durupt, Louis Hersent, Redouté, Camille Roqueplan.
Sculptures are by Barre, Bartholdi, Théophile Bra (Mme Mention, bronze), Auguste Clésinger (Self-portrait and Portrait of George Sand, marble), Dantan, David d’Angers, Jean-Jacques Feuchère (Satan), François-Désiré Froment-Meurice, Théodore Gechter (Harold, bronze), Antonin Moine (Sully, bronze), Marie d’Orléans (La Chasse au faucon, I & 2, plaster, ca. 1835), James Pradier (Sappho, bronze), Christian Daniel Rauch (Goethe, bronze, 1820)…
The Museum also displays several portraits and material related to the famous scholar and writer Ernest Renan who had married Ary Scheffer’s niece.
The Society of Friends of the Museum
The Society of Friends of the Museum was created in 1996, 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, allowed to receive, 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 like Marc Laforet, Jean-Marc Luisada, Alain Planès, Yves Henry, up to Alfred Brendel, and many of the most promising young performers, from the violinist Laurent Korcia to the pianists Bertrand Chamayou, Khatia Buniatishvili or Adam Laloum, without forgetting music groups of chamber in trio and quartet.