The former townhouse of Paul Marmottan now holds one of the world’s most important collections of Claude Monet’s work. In this quiet sixteenth-arrondissement setting, Empire-era rooms and Impressionist canvases create an intimate encounter with the artist’s changing vision.
Quick facts
Paul Marmottan bequeathed his house and collections to the Académie des beaux-arts; the museum opened to the public on 21 June 1934.
Michel Monet’s 1966 bequest brought more than one hundred Monet works to the museum, and a gallery beneath the garden opened in 1970 to show large canvases.
Nine paintings were stolen from the museum in 1985, recovered in Corsica in December 1990, and rehung in 1991.
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The Musée Marmottan Monet contains a revealing contradiction. Its rooms preserve Paul Marmottan’s devotion to Napoleon’s era, yet its most famous painting, Claude Monet’s *Impression, Sunrise*, helped give a name to an art movement that Marmottan himself had criticized. The museum’s history is not a tidy plan; it is a series of gifts that gradually changed what this Paris house means.
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