Until March 23, 2025, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Pau offers you one year Travel ! And what trips. “ This new exhibition, through the theme of travel, allows us to approach all the museum’s holdings and all periods.”confirms Muriel Fourcade, interim director of the Museum of Fine Arts in Pau. “We wanted to understand travel in the broadest sense of the word. The journeys of the works, the artists and the reasons why they travel, the journeys of the icons… We also worked a lot on the texts of the rooms that explain the prejudices.”supplies.
In this new clash the will is confirmed, and it’s true, a little liberating, “put aside the “art history” aspect, although there are of course more classical aspects in certain rooms of the course, but overall it allowed us to design quite new clash rhythms ».
El Greco, Rubens, Castaing: Italy in the middle
For example, on the ground floor, for a large part of the rooms, Italy is at the epicenter of the journey, “but each time with a different entrance door”. The first rooms therefore evoke the journey of training artists, which from the 16th to the 18th century is a must for every young aspiring artist, with the highlight: Italy. In the same room, there are works by El Greco, Rubens, Brughel the Elder, as well as works by artists including the Spaniard José de Ribera, who, like others, followed Caravaggio or were inspired by him.
Italy is also the artists awarded the Grand Prix de Rome, which opened the doors of the Villa Medicis to these winners. Among them, only one from Béarn, in 1924, René-Marie Castaing, whose self-portrait stares at visitors. “We have many artists in our collection who have been awarded this very prestigious prize, covering a wide period from the 18th to the early 20th century”.
About a third of the works in this new exhibition have never been exhibited or very little.
Then, due to local pride, two rooms are reserved for travel in the Pyrenees. There we encounter Gustave Doré, whose painting, View of Luchon Hell Hole or even Eugène Deveria, who came to settle in Pau for health reasons. In addition to several of the artist’s works, the exhibition also shows the scope of his work. Another painter from the Pyrenees, the most local of all, trained in the workshop of the previous one, Victor Galos, who never left Pau and its region.
One entire wall is dedicated to graphic works of the 20th century on the theme of exile. Not yet exhibited works from the very rich graphic collection of the museum (more than 300 engravings and other graphic works).
But paths are also inner paths, “a step aside in the selection of the museum team”thus leaving room for a whole range of Symbolist works, some of which have never been shown before. “Approximately a third of the works in this new exhibition have never been exhibited or very little. This applies especially to all the graphic works presented at the end of the exhibition on the subject of art and exile in the 20th century. “, clarifies Muriel Fourcade.
These jobs that travel
Others, on the other hand, are “star” works that are not only shown, but also borrowed a lot. For example, the famous Degas, Cotton office in New Orleans, “the first work ever to be purchased from the artist by a public collection…”, slides by Dominique Vazquez, head of museum collections. The image here helps to illustrate the theme of the “Transportation Revolution”, but it could equally well have joined the space dedicated to “Roads of Cannon”.
We can find there, for example, Léon Bonnat, a native of Bayonne, or even the work of Camille Corot, who revived the art of landscape and is considered the forerunner of the Impressionists. Fontainebleau to the gorges of Apremont, small, quite dark format, it is actually recognized as the first work painted in the exterior. The most wanted of all is also there, famous The passion of sewing in the Bonneval gardenby Berthe Morisot, the genius of Impressionism. “He’ll Go to Italy Soon”, confides Dominique Vazquez. All the more reason to rush to the museum. If the new exhibition is planned for one year, it will undergo some development during this time, especially during the loan of some works.
Muriel Fourcade, interim director of the Pau Museum of Fine Arts in front of the work “Sacrifice” by Alfred de Richemond, on display in the rooms dedicated to inner journeys and states of mind
During this artistic journey, visitors will also encounter the Orientalist wave and its social influence, which accompanied the beginnings of colonization. They made a stop in Spain, the antichamber of trips to the East, or even greeted painters from Bordeaux passing through the Basque Country, among whom we can particularly recognize the touch of Albert Marquet in his Boats in Cibour.
Definitely a trip worth taking. Pleasant and surprising at the same time.