Museum history

The opening of the museum back in 1809

In order to display the paintings confiscated from emigrants or acquired during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, Jean-Antoine Chaptal, Minister of the Interior, chose on September 1st 1801 fifteen cities where to establish large deposits of paintings. Caen is then chosen for its academic reputation and status as the cultural capital of Normandy.

The decision is made to use the left wing of the former Eudits seminary, already partly occupied since 1792 by the municipal administration. On 27 October 1802, the Calvados prefect asked that François-Pierre Fleuriau, who also ran the municipal school of drawing founded in 1804, be given the title of “curator at the Musée de Caen”.

In order to enrich the collection of paintings gathered after the Gloriette Revolution, the new curator chose in 1804 forty-six canvases by different artists (Veronèse, Poussin...), thus making the lot of Caen the most important after that of Lyon. The museum is officially opened to the public on December 2, 1809.

The Mancel collection in 1872

From 1811, the new curator, Henri Elouis, enriched the collections, notably with a new batch of thirty-five paintings attributed by the Minister of the Interior. In 1815, the Prussians camped on the ground floor of the former Eudists seminary to demand the return of the paintings confiscated in German. Elouis then hides the most important paintings; according to legend, he hid Rubens' Abraham and Melchisedech under the table used for the Prussian officer's dinner.

The second half of the 19th century was devoted to the study of collections. In 1837, Georges Mancel drew up the first catalogue of the museum and in the 1850s the first monographs devoted to the collections were published. Alfred Guillard succeeded Elouis from 1841 to 1880. In 1853, the city accepted a legacy of Pierre-Aimé Lair consisting of one hundred and forty-one paintings, much of which came from the gallery of Jean Regnault de Segrais, as well as the legacy of the baroness de Montaran in 1858, including three canvases by François Boucher, about twenty of Théodore Gudin and one of Pierre Mignard. In 1856, the museum was expanded to occupy the wing connecting the museum to the library of Caen.

The most important donation in the history of the museum is that of the Mancel collection, in 1872. It is bequeathed by the Caennais bookseller Bernard Mancel, who had bought in 1845 a large part of the collection of Cardinal Fesch, uncle of Napoleon I, in Rome. It is composed of a lot of more than fifty thousand works: prints by Durer, Rembrandt or Callot, as well as thirty paintings including The Virgin and the Child by Rogier van der Weyden. A year later, Colonel Langlois’s family bequeathed two hundred and fifty-six paintings depicting military battles and panoramas. In 1888, these paintings were transferred to the Pavillon des sociétés savantes, which was built at the expense of Colonel Langlois’s niece to form the Langlois Museum.

The fire of 1905 

The new curators, Xénophon Hellouin and then Gustave Ménégoz, acquired mainly regionalist works of exclusively local interest. Despite the gift by Dr. Jacquette of paintings by Courbet, Boudin and Lépine, modern painting, especially impressionist, remains virtually absent from the museum.

While other cities built large museums to house their collections, the buildings of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen were kept in a precarious state and on 3 November 1905 some of the collections caught on fire. Several works from the Dutch and Flemish schools were lost, as well as François Derbon’s The Battle of Hastings. The fire caused a scandal and the local and national press called for a reorganization of the museum which would not happen until... 65 years later.

World War ll

In 1934, Louis-Édouard Garrido was appointed curator. From 1936 he undertook a restoration of the museum and improved the lighting of the works. But the process was interrupted by the Second World War. 360 paintings, the Mancel collection, Bernard van Riesen Burgh’s dresser and other objects of art were transferred to the priory of Saint-Gabriel, the abbey of Mondaye and the castle of Baillou. On 7 June 1944, the former seminary was largely destroyed and the last aerial bombardment by the Allies, on the 7th of July, completed its destruction. 540 paintings (large formats, 19th century collections and a large number of anonymous prints from the 17th century), the 400 drawings in the print cabinet, furniture, art objects, sculptures, archives, inventories and frames disappeared. The saved works are finally hastily stored in the unhealthy ruins of the Hôtel d'Escoville and the Langlois museum. Only one room of the hotel of Escoville is open to the public and only three temporary exhibitions are organized in the 1950s. 

Museum reconstruction

In 1963, we began to think about the reconstruction of the museum. The collections are inventoried by Françoise Debaisieux; in addition to the works of the Mancel collection, there are then 567 paintings and miniatures, ceramics and porcelain. The preliminary project proposed by Jean Merlet, architect in chief of the Historic Monuments, within the walls of the castle was adopted on 26 January 1967. The new museum was opened to the public on 27 June 1970, but it was inaugurated on 14 December 1970. At the same time, the new curator, Françoise Debaisieux, embarked on a policy of acquisition focusing on the French, Italian and Flemish schools of the 17th century. This policy is supported by the deposits of the Louvre museum.

In 1982, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen was promoted to “classified museum”, thus recognizing the importance of collections and the vitality of the policy aimed at enriching them. In 1988, Alain Tapié succeeded Françoise Debaisieux. He expanded the collections by acquiring contemporary works. The new curator had a new wing built by Philippe Dubois in 1994. As a result of this extension, the museum received in 1995, for its architecture and programme, the Grand Prix national des Musées awarded by the Ministry of Culture. Since 2007, the museum has been at the centre of the sculpture park, set up in the castle by Patrick Ramade, chief curator and director of the museum from 2004 to 2014. Emmanuelle Delapierre succeeded him.