The story
La Rochelle's museum of fine arts is closed for now. Its building, the former palace of the town's bishops, has been under renovation since 2018, and the city plans to reopen it in 2027.
When it returns, the collection will have a strong local accent, because two well-known 19th-century painters were born in La Rochelle. William Bouguereau, later famous for polished mythologies and nudes, is represented at both ends of his career. Ulysses Recognised by His Nurse was painted as a student, around 1849, for the Prix de Rome competition, and Ocean Nymph dates from 1904, a year before his death. Eugène Fromentin, the painter and writer of North Africa, appears with Arab Horsemen from 1857.
The collection was started in 1841 by a local Society of Friends of the Arts and moved into the building in the 1840s. The house is known as the hôtel de Crussol d'Uzès, after the bishop who had it rebuilt between 1769 and 1774 by the architect Gilles Nassivet. About 900 paintings and drawings from the 15th to the 20th century include works by Camille Corot and Théodore Chassériau, alongside a group of Chinese export paintings by Youqua, a painter working in Canton before 1844.
