Museum of the Romantics - George Sand, Ary Scheffer, Ernest Renan

The Museum of the Romantics (Musée de la vie romantique) located near the Pigalle District, traces the Romanticism that emerged in the middle of the 19th century and affected all of Europe. It is built around principles such as sensitivity, expression of feelings and melancholy. France is a major pole of romanticism in the 1830s. At that time Paris was a major center of artistic creation.

Paris left bank and Paris right bank

Paris was clearly divided between the left and right banks. On the left bank, the universities and the student hostels where the provincial bourgeois come to live; on the right bank, the newspapers, theaters, cafés and restaurants. It is on this side of the Seine that was born near Pigalle, the romantic district par excellence, the New Athens.

The house of the painter Ary Scheffer

Arrived in Paris in 1811, Ary Scheffer (1795-1858), painter of Dutch origin, settled in July 1830 in the fashionable district of the "New Athens" at the n° 7 of the street Chaptal (actual n° 16). Opposite the house, Ary Scheffer had two studios built with a glass roof, facing north, on both sides of the paved courtyard: one was used as a living room, the other as a workroom.

Ary Scheffer, drawing teacher of the children of the Duke of Orleans since 1822, worthy representative of the romantic school, asserts his success. His residence knows during thirty years an intense artistic, political and literary activity.

Ary Scheffer's guests from all over Paris

In the studio-salon, Scheffer, a famous portraitist under the July monarchy, receives the artistic and intellectual Tout-Paris. Delacroix comes as a neighbor, as does Chopin, who likes to play on the Pleyel piano. They met Liszt and Marie d'Agoult, but also Rossini, Tourgueniev, Dickens or Pauline Viardot.

The workshop, which is located in front of a delicious clutter of seringas and rosebushes, was used by Ary Scheffer and his younger brother Henry, also a painter. Theodore Rousseau completed The Descent of the Cows on rue Chaptal: this painting having been refused at the Salon of 1835, Ary Scheffer showed it together with paintings of his friends Paul Huet and Jules Dupré, thus instituting an "exhibition of the refused". He also housed in this studio part of the collections of the family of King Louis-Philippe when they left France for exile in 1848.

The succession of Ary Scheffer

From then on, his only daughter Cornelia Scheffer-Marjolin preserved the setting where her father worked. One year later, she organized a retrospective of the master's work, 26 boulevard des Italiens in Paris. The studios, converted at her initiative into an emergency hospital during the Commune in 1870-1871, were then used as exhibition rooms for Scheffer's main works.

In 1899, Cornelia Scheffer-Marjolin died, bequeathing her father's paintings to her native city, Dordrecht in the Netherlands. The property on the rue Chaptal went to Noémi Renan-Psichari (Scheffer's grand-niece), who installed a large salon and a library dedicated to the works of her father Ernest Renan. She rented the second studio to artists.

It is in this studio-salon that Noémi Renan-Psichari, then her daughter Corrie Psichari-Siohan continued in the XXth 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 on rue Chaptal.

The birth of the Museum of the Romantics Life

In 1956, the house was sold to the State for a symbolic amount, in order to establish a cultural institution. After having hosted a university teaching and research center devoted to the study of sound and color, the State handed over the management of the building to the city of Paris in 1982. It then opened an annex of 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 "Museum of Romantic Life".

The Museum of the Romantics Life today

In this district of New Athens, the Museum of Romantic Life recreates a harmonious historical setting evoking the Romantic era. The inspirations of the Romantic artists in their favorite themes in literature, paintings and sculptures are found in the rooms of the Museum of Romantic Life.

Three famous figures of the 19th century are present in the Museum of Romantic Life: George Sand, Ary Scheffer and Ernest Renan.

The first floor is dedicated to George Sand : portraits, furniture, and jewelry from the 18th and 19th centuries. On the second floor, the paintings of the painter Ary Scheffer are surrounded by works of his contemporaries. Temporary exhibitions are organized as well as concerts, readings and animations for children. In the garden of the museum, the Rose Bakery tea room, a real haven of peace, allows you to take a gourmet break.

His niece, Cornélie, daughter of his younger brother Henry Scheffer, who was also a painter, married the philosopher and man of letters Ernest Renan. Ernest Renan's library is kept at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, but the Museum of the Romantics has an important collection of printed works (editions of works, critical studies) and manuscripts, including Averroès and L'Avenir de la Science, copied by his sister Henriette and corrected by her. An abundant correspondence and a collection of photographs complete this collection. Various pieces of furniture from his apartment at the Collège de France are also preserved.

Rose Bakery tea room of the Museum of the Romantics

The Rose Bakery tea room of the Museum of the Romantics offers sweet and savory meals all year round during the museum's opening hours.
Information : 01 71 19 24 08