Musée Bourdelle

Entrance of musée Bourdelle

Musée Bourdelle, hall of plasters

The Musée Bourdelle is an art museum located in the 15th arrondissement at 18, rue Antoine Bourdelle, Paris, France. It is open daily, except Mondays. The nearest métro stations are Falguière and Montparnasse – Bienvenüe.

The museum preserves the studio of sculptor Antoine Bourdelle (1861-1929), and provides an example of Parisian ateliers from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was Bourdelle's active studio from 1885-1929.

In 1922 he began plans to turn his studio into a museum; in the early 1930s Gabriel Cognacq provided funds to purchase the studio and thus avoid dispersing the artist's remaining works. The museum was inaugurated in 1949, and expanded in 1961 by architect Henri Gautruche and again in 1992 by Christian de Portzamparc.

Today the museum contains more than 500 works including marble, plaster, and bronze statues, paintings, pastels, fresco sketches, and Bourdelle's personal collection of works by artists including Eugène Carrière, Eugène Delacroix, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Adolphe Joseph Thomas Monticelli, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, and Auguste Rodin. It contains the original plaster casts of some of his finest works including 21 studies of Ludwig van Beethoven, as well as document archives and his copies of Greek and medieval works.

A second Bourdelle garden-museum, in Égreville, was established by his heirs in the late 1960s. It hosts another 56 of his sculptures.

See also

• List of museums in Paris

References

• Musée Bourdelle
• Pariserve description (French)
• Frommers description
• Paris.org entry

Coordinates: 48°50′35″N 2°19′6″E / 48.84306°N 2.31833°E / 48.84306; 2.31833