The story
The Villa des Chimères, an Italian-style house of 1902 above the spa town of Aix-les-Bains in Savoy, holds the collection of one man. Doctor Jean Faure spent the years between the two world wars buying paintings and sculpture through his contacts in Paris, and when he died in 1942 he left everything to the town. Aix bought the villa to house it, and the museum opened in 1949.
Faure's taste had two poles. One was Auguste Rodin, represented here by 33 sculptures and studies. The other was French painting from about 1850 to 1920, the Impressionists and the generation just before them, with Degas's Danseuses mauves, a view of Bonnières by Paul Cézanne and Alfred Sisley's The Seine at Argenteuil from 1872. The villa also keeps a reconstructed room from the boarding house where the poet Alphonse de Lamartine stayed in 1816, the summer he met Julie Charles, the woman behind his poem Le Lac.
The museum is currently closed for a full renovation and is scheduled to reopen in 2027 under a new name, La Villa, Collection d'art.
