Oudrymania. Fables, hunting scenes and combats.

Depicted in hunting, portraiture or combat, animals feature among the most striking images produced by Jean-Baptiste Oudry.
A gifted artist with an unrivalled mastery of his technique, he brings us face-to-face with the animal repertoire as it existed in the 18th century, including in a series of three hunting scenes he painted for the Château de Chantilly, scattered to the four winds after the French Revolution but exceptionally brought together for this show.

Animal scenes were extremely popular with the leading collectors in the 18th century, including the princes of Condé, who commissioned them from the artist. A set of exquisite drawings by Oudry loaned from a private collection will feature in this exhibition alongside works from Chantilly’s collections, allowing visitors to see pieces never displayed in public before.

These include a large number of illustrations for La Fontaine’s fables, showing how the fabulist and the artist use the animal kingdom to help us laugh at and reflect on human nature. These illustrations were so effective they were copied by the arts and crafts industry and included in their decorative production, examples of which can also be admired in the exhibition.

Through paintings, drawings, objets d’art and rare books, this show shines a light into every corner of the OUDRYMANIA that has gripped art lovers for centuries.

A passionate eye. Twelve years of acquisitions by Ger Luijten

Ger Luijten was director of the Fondation Custodia for twelve years, from June 2010 until his premature death in December 2022. During this period, Ger Luijten pursued a bold, dynamic acquisitions policy, putting his well-trained eye and his experience at the service of the Fondation Custodia.

Among the circa ten thousand items that have entered the collection since 2010, some have already been displayed to the public at various exhibitions and some are shown here for the first time. The visitor is invited to discover this remarkable display via a trajectory organised by technique (drawings, prints, paintings, oil sketches, letters and manuscripts, contemporary artists).

The variety of the schools on show is testimony to the diversity of the collection. Although the Dutch and Flemish schools are lavishly represented, Danish drawings rub shoulders with British prints, a German drawing with a Spanish sketch. Famous names hang close to less well-known artists as well as to artists whose identity remains to be established. All the works share a common radiance, a poetic presence, a reflection of the personality and taste of Ger Luijten.

The King's horses.
The horses of Marly, a masterpiece of equestrian art

An exhibition devoted to the presence of the horse at the Domaine de Marly from Louis XIV to the Revolution.
As part of the equestrian events of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the Musée du Domaine Royal de Marly presents an original exhibition dedicated to the presence of the horse at the Domaine de Marly from Louis XIV to the Revolution.

Through some one hundred paintings, sculptures, drawings, engravings, accessories and archival documents, the exhibition retraces Marly's rich equestrian history and the imprint of the horse on this emblematic site. A symbol of royal power, the horse's presence, real or imagined, is shown in all its different guises: as a companion in entertainment, political and military activities, and as an artistic, cultural or symbolic figure.

Maria Cosway (1760 - 1938).
A strada ecceziunale di un’artista

The exhibition Maria Cosway –1760-1838– A Strada eccezziunale di un’artista (The Singular Itinerary of an Artist), presented from May to October 2024 at the Pasquale Paoli Birthplace Museum, tells the journey of a brilliant woman who seemed destined for a great career as an artist in the English High Society and who, against all odds, found her true emancipation by renouncing her first vocation to dedicate herself to the education of young girls.

A faithful friend, Pasquale Paoli was present at every stage of this singular life. His letters to Maria Cosway, like a common thread, punctuate the different sections of this exhibition.

This exhibition is part of a common theme of temporary exhibitions featured in the museums of the Collectivité de Corse for the period 2024-2025: Donne Di Corsica

The Body in Motion

On the occasion of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the Petit Palais is celebrating “The Body in Motion” starting on 15 May 2024. This exhibition connects art and sport within its collections.

The exhibition, with a scenography design reflecting the colours of the Olympics, presents fifty works from the collections of the Petit Palais, ranging from antiquity to the early twentieth century, some of which have been specially taken out of the reserves.

These paintings, sculptures, and art objects, as well as drawings and prints from the museum, were chosen for the way in which they highlight the body, anatomy, and sport. The exhibition is divided into eight sections.

L'Esprit des lieux: The Henner Museum as seen by Christelle Téa

As part of Drawing Week (18-25 March 2024), the drawings produced by Christelle Téa during her residency at the Musée Henner in 2017 will once again be on show from 13 March to 15 April 2024.

To coincide with the museum's 100th anniversary celebrations, the mini-exhibition "L'esprit des lieux. The Henner Museum as seen by Christelle Téa" is an opportunity to honour the institution, portrayed by the artist in all its forms - portraits of rooms, staff and activities.

Christelle Téa's drawings are moving testimonies from a young 21st-century artist to a museum from another era, bringing the spirit of the place to life.

 

Christelle Téa, Le salon rouge, 2017 Encre de Chine sur papier, JJHD 2017-5, Paris, musée national Jean-Jacques Henner © Christelle Téa

Fondation Dubuffet: a chronicle of 50 years of activity

This anniversary exhibition presents major works from the collection, focusing on the portrait and the figure: gifts from the artist, bequests from his daughter and more recent acquisitions.

Particular emphasis is placed on a set of ten portraits of friends and writers from the series Plus beaux qu'ils croient, painted in pencil or Indian ink on paper between 1946 and 1947.

The exhibition then moves on to a room evoking the artist's studio at the Cartoucherie de Vincennes, and offers a glimpse of the initial endowment, an essential contribution when the Foundation was set up.

Jean Dubuffet, Les prestations, 6 juillet 1979
Acrylique sur papier entoilé (avec 6 pièces rapportées collées), 51 x 70 cm Coll.
Fondation Dubuffet, Paris © ADAGP, Paris, 2024

Auguste Herbin (1882-1960)

The painter Auguste Herbin (1882-1960) is the best-kept secret of the modern art adventure. Yet he played an active part in all the creative breakthroughs of the twentieth century: fauvism, cubism, abstraction.

The man who lived for eighteen years at the Bateau-Lavoir produced, in his final style, a plastic alphabet with universal appeal, and works of astonishing beauty.

The Musée de Montmartre is the first museum in Paris to organise a retrospective devoted to this tireless pioneer, who is unjustly forgotten despite being a key figure in the history of modernism.

1874 Draw!
What did people draw in 1874?

In parallel with the exhibition "Paris 1874, Inventing impressionism", and on the occasion of the Salon du dessin, the Musée d'Orsay is presenting an anthology of its most beautiful graphic artworks from 1874.

In sanguine, charcoal, pastels, or watercolor, on colored paper or drafting film, on cardboard or the page of a notebook, this collection of works shows the new heights the art of drawing had reached in 1874.

Curatorship
Géraldine Masson, scientific advisor - graphic arts, Musée d'Orsay

Edgar Degas, Danseuse se grattant le dos, c. 1873-1874, fusain, pierre noire et rehauts de blanc, mise au carreau sur papier bistre Michallet. Collection Musée d'Orsay - Département des Arts Graphiques du musée du Louvre, Paris. Achat en vente publique, 1919© photo : RMN-Grand Palais (Musée d’Orsay) / Adrien Didierjean

Claude Gillot. Comédies, fables & arabesques

Draughtsman and engraver Claude Gillot (Langres, 1673 - Paris, 1722) owed much of his reputation to the fantasy of his drawings and the freedom of his engravings, earning him the reputation of an undisciplined artist in the final years of the Grand Siècle.

Distanced from the official art of Versailles, his art was that of Italian comedy, fable and theatre, which was then in full development.

This exhibition is organised with the Grand-Palais-RMn, Paris, and the exceptional participation of the Musée du Louvre, which presented this exhibition in November 2023.

Claude Gillot, La Fausse coquette, plume et encre noire, lavis de sanguine, 16 x 21,8cm,
Paris, musée du Louvre, département des Arts graphiques, Inv. 26751

Jean Hélion. The prose of the world

The Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris is staging a retrospective exhibition of the work of Jean Hélion (1904-1987), a painter and intellectual whose work spans the 20^th century.

Jean Hélion was one of the pioneers of abstraction, which he introduced to America in the 1930s, before moving on to personal figuration at the dawn of the Second World War.

Organised chronologically, the exhibition brings together over 150 works (103 paintings, 50 drawings, notebooks and a wealth of documentation), rarely shown to the public, from major French and international institutions as well as numerous private collections.

Jean Hélion, L’homme à la joue rouge, 1943 Huile sur toile, 65 x 49,5 cm Claudine Hélion–Altmann, Paris © ADAGP, Paris, 2024

The Tiepolos. Invention and virtuosity in Venice

The Beaux-Arts de Paris presents their exceptional group of drawings by Giambattista Tiepolo (1696-1770), the second public collection of the artist's drawings in France.

This collection is especially the only one in France to include drawings not only by Giambattista, but also by his two painter sons, Giandomenico (1727-1804), and Lorenzo (1736-1776) as well as another artist who assisted Tiepolo in the 1730s, Giovanni Raggi (1712-1792/1794). It therefore alone allows a view of the graphic practices within the family and the workshop.

The exhibition of these sheets, associated with works by other artists, sources of inspiration, like Rembrandt and Piazzetta, or contemporaries and followers (Canaletto, Guardi, Novelli) highlights the great modernity of the Tiepolo's art.

Curator: Hélène Gasnault
Associate Curator: Giulia Longo

Victor Hugo fencing

La Maison de Victor Hugo (The Victor Hugo House) is joining in the celebrations of the 2024 Olympic Games, drawing on the practice of fencing within the Hugo family to establish a symbolic link that evokes Victor Hugo's major battles, the universal values he defended and which resonate with the values of Olympism.

In several drawings, Victor Hugo was interested in the musketeers or the beggar swordsmen, as with the character of Goulatromba, mentioned in Ruy Blas and who will become the protagonist of many dramatic fragments…