Musée des Augustins

Musée des Augustins in Toulouse

Cloister, Musée des Augustins, Toulouse

The Musée des Augustins de Toulouse is a fine arts museum in Toulouse, France which conserves a collection of sculpture and paintings from the Middle Ages to the early twentieth century. The paintings are from throughout France, the sculptures representing Occitan culture of the region with a particularly rich assemblage of Romanesque sculpture.

History

Cloister, Musée des Augustins, Toulouse

almond tree, Cloister, Musée des Augustins, Toulouse

The building in which the museum is sited was built in 1309 in the Gothic style and prior to the French Revolution housed Toulouse's Augustinian convent. The convent was secularized in 1793 and first opened to the public as a museum on 27 August 1795 by decree of the French Convention, very shortly after the opening of the Louvre, making it one of the oldest museums in France after the Louvre.^[1] It at first housed the Muséum Provisoire du Midi de la République and the école des Beaux-Arts.

The Musée des Augustins de Toulouse was one of fifteen museums founded in provincial centres, by a decree of 13 Fructidor year IX (31 August 1801), which was promulgated by the minister of the interior, Jean-Antoine Chaptal. At the start of the 19th century several medieval buildings (notably the refectory) were demolished and in their place Viollet-le-Duc and his pupil Darcy put up new exhibition galleries, accessed by a Gothic Revival monumental stair offering an interplay of richly complicated vaulting systems. The works continued from 1873 to 1901, when the museum reopened. In effect, Toulouse commissioned Urbain Vitry to ensure remove all the convent's religious characteristics. The archaeologist Alexandre du Mège occupied the cloister and rebuilt it to be able to house the medieval collections gathered from Toulouse's destroyed religious buildings such as the basilique Saint-Sernin. Today the cloister houses a reconstructed medieval garden. The building was classed as a Monument historique in 1840.^[2]

Collections

The progressive concern of the museum's founder Jean-Antoine Chaptal, an early example of cultural devolution, was intended to ensure that "each collection presents an interesting series of paintings representing all the masters, all the genres and all the schools". In a series of shipments culminating in 1811, Toulouse was enriched with works by Guercino, Pietro Perugino, Rubens and Philippe de Champaigne.

The collections total over 4,000 works and their core derives from confiscation of Church property at the time of the French Revolution as well as seizures of the private collections of emigrés, in Toulouse notably the paintings of the cardinal de Bernis and Louis-Auguste le Tonnelier, baron de Breteuil. The museum's church even houses an organ built in 1981 by Jürgen Ahrend.

Paintings

The French schools of the 15th to 18th centuries are represented by Jean-Baptiste Oudry, Philippe de Champaigne, Louise Moillon, Valentin de Boulogne, Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes and Jean-Antoine Houdon, as well as painters from Toulouse and its region, such as Antoine and Jean-Pierre Rivalz, Nicolas Tournier, François de Troy and Joseph Roques. French 19th and 20th century painting are also represented, with works by Toulouse-Lautrec, Ingres, Vuillard and Delacroix. The painting collection also includes works by Spanish, Dutch and Italian artists Neri di Bicci, Lorenzo Monaco, Crespi, Pietro Perugino, Bernardo Strozzi, Guido Reni, Guercino, Carlo Maratta, Rubens, Anton Van Dyck, Jacob Jordaens, Aelbert Cuyp, van Aelst, Van Haarleem and Bartolomé Esteban Murillo. It also includes works by Philippe de Champaigne, Sébastien Bourdon, Pierre Mignard, Hyacinthe Rigaud, Nicolas de Largillierre, Jean-Baptiste Oudry, Claude Joseph Vernet, Élisabeth-Louise Vigée-Lebrun, Francesco Solimena, Francesco Guardi, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Antoine Jean Gros, Eugène Delacroix, Camille Corot, Gustave Courbet, Édouard Manet, Berthe Morisot, Édouard Vuillard, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Maurice Utrillo, Maurice Denis...

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  Perugino, Saint John the Evangelist and Saint Augustine (1512-1523).

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  Jean-André Rixens, Death of Cleopatra (1874).

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  Edouard Debat-Ponsan, The massage

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  Nicolas Tournier, Descent from the Cross

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  Joseph Roques, Portrait of Madame Sermet

Sculpture

The museum's sculpture collection is in large part due to the rescue activities of antiquaries and museum curators such as Alexandre du Mège who managed to extricate sculpture from the frequent destruction of religious buildings that marked the nineteenth century. It is particularly strong in 12th century Romanesque sculpture from the city's three main religious buildings - the priory of Notre-Dame de la Daurade, the basilica of Saint-Sernin and the cathedral of Saint-Étienne. It also includes many 14th and 15th century locally-produced sculptures and eight 16th century terracotta figures from the chapelle de Rieux (Notre-Dame de Grasse and works by the master of Rieux), built around 1340 in the couvent des Cordeliers, as well as gargoyles from the same convent. It also houses 19th century sculpture, with plaster works by Alexandre Falguière and his pupil Antonin Mercié, as well as works by Rodin and a bronze by Camille Claudel.

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  The cloister

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  Gargoyles

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  Notre-Dame de Grasse

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  Sculptures by the Master of Rieux - In the foreground, Jean Tissendier, bishop of Rieux

References

1. ^ la Haute-Garonne encyclopédie illustrée, page 292, ISBN 2-7089-5811-9
2. ^ Notice number PA00094510, sur la base Mérimée, ministère de la Culture

• Musée des Augustins de Toulouse official website (English)

Coordinates: 43°36′04″N 1°26′46″E / 43.601°N 1.446°E / 43.601; 1.446