Timeline

Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The Musée des Peintres de Barbizon, managed by the Seine-et-Marne departmental council since 2004, was born from the merger between the house-workshop of Théodore Rousseau (opened in 1975) and the inn Ganne, acquired by the municipality in 1995. This building, originally a farm transformed into a grocery store-inn in 1834 by François and Edme Ganne, became a meeting place for artists in resorts, housing painters such as Rousseau, Millet or Díaz de la Peña. The rooms still retain 19th-century drawings and wall pochades, testimonies of their passage.

A first municipal museum was created in 1927 in the workshop of Théodore Rousseau, but closed in 1930 for financial reasons, dispersing the works exhibited. Launched in 1975 on the occasion of the centenary of Millet's death, he reopened in 1977 with 26 works, before extending to the Ganne Inn in 1995. The rehabilitation work then revealed hidden murals, reinforcing its historical interest. The museum now houses about 100 major works of the Barbizon school, as well as temporary exhibitions.

The Ganne inn, listed as a Historic Monument, was the golden age of Barbizon (1830-1875), where artists came to paint in the forest of Fontainebleau. The rooms on the ground floor restore the atmosphere of the "painted" in Ganne, with furniture and painted decors of the period. Upstairs, the sleeping rooms, covered with graffiti and sketches, illustrate the daily life of these landscape painters, precursors of impressionism. The museum also maintains archives, moulds and ethnographic objects related to this period.

The management of the museum was taken over by the Conseil général de Seine-et-Marne in 2004, uniting the two sites: the inn Ganne (92 Grande Rue) and the house-atelier Rousseau. The latter place, where the painter lived until 1867, now hosts temporary exhibitions. The museum, labeled Musée de France, highlights a unique artistic and historical heritage, linked to the 19th century landscape revolution and its anchoring in the territory of Fontainebleau.

External links