The story
Léon Bonnat was one of the most sought-after portrait painters in 19th-century Paris, and he spent much of the fortune it brought him on other men's drawings. Born in Bayonne in 1833, he left his hometown a collection so deep it earned this small Basque museum the nickname the little Louvre.
The heart of it is those drawings: sheets by Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, Dürer, Rembrandt and Ingres, hung near paintings by Rubens, Van Dyck, El Greco and Goya. Bonnat began giving the works to Bayonne in the 1890s, and the museum built to hold them opened in 1901.
It then closed in 2011 for a renovation that ran on for 14 years, reopening in November 2025 with more than 1,000 works back on view, from Goya and El Greco to Bonnat's own portraits of Third Republic notables.
Collection
12 works
The Half-Length BatherJean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1807
The Sweet LandscapePierre Puvis de Chavannes, 1882
Hercules's dog discovers tyrian purplePeter Paul Rubens, 1636
Portrait of the duc de BenaventeEl Greco, 1590
Francisco Téllez-Girón, 10th Duke de OsunaFrancisco Goya, 1816
Académie d'homme tirant sur une cordeThéodore Géricault, 1812
Portrait of Léon BonnatEdgar Degas, 1863
The Desperate WomanJusepe de Ribera, 1638
Francesca da Rimini and Paolo MalatestaJean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1846
Saint Jerome as CardinalEl Greco, 1590
The last communion of Saint José de Calasanz (1557-1648)Francisco Goya, 1817
JobLéon Bonnat, 1880