musée Jean-Léon Gérôme

A Roman prisoner of war, chained at a doorway like a guard dog, under the words Cave Canem, beware of the dog. Jean-Léon Gérôme painted this scene in 1881, and it hangs today in his birthplace, Vesoul. Gérôme, one of the most celebrated academic painters of 19th-century Paris, began sending works home in 1885, five sculptures first and then a painting. In 1945 his descendants added about 20 more paintings and sculptures.

The town museum was founded in 1882 and since 1981 has occupied a former Ursuline convent from the 17th century. For decades it bore the name of Georges Garret, a former mayor of Vesoul, and in 2024 it took the painter's name. Besides his pictures and his sculpture Omphale, it shows pupils of his from the region, such as Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret, and a landscape by Gustave Courbet, born in nearby Ornans. The archaeology rooms hold Gallo-Roman funerary stones found around Vesoul.