Musée Jacquemart-André in the 8th Arrondissement

My favorite small museum in Paris

The 8th arrondissement in Paris is one of the city’s most distinguished neighborhoods with a lot to offer. I tend to venture into it often due to the treasure trove of smaller museums, and landmarks. The Arc de Triomphe is here as well as the majestic Madeleine church. The area is also home to some of the city’s most glamorous shopping. Designer boutiques like Chanel, Prada, Louis Vuitton, Dior, and Burberry line the streets. As you can imagine, this area can get very busy during Paris fashion week.

The Grand Palais and Petit Palais are also in this arrondissement, as well as the Musée Cernuschi and Musée Nissim Camondo. These are all very wonderful and I highly recommend visiting them. But one of my favorite museums in all of Paris is also here, the Museé Jacquemart-André. Whenever people ask me for a recommendation on an alternative to the Louvre or Orsay, this is where I send them. Of course it’s not exactly the same, but the Jacquemart does have some equally famous artwork of its own.

The Lamentation of Christ
by Andrea Mantegna

The museum, located at 158 Boulevard Haussmann, is set in a historic mansion. It was built in 1869 by architect Henri Parent, and it took six years to build. Henri was one of the greatest architects in Paris at that time. He was in the running to design the Palais Garnier but lost the bid to Charles Garnier. So, as you can imagine, the architecture itself is one of the highlights of the museum.

Learning the history of a museum before going inside can make it easier to transport your mind into another era before you even walk through the doors. And in this case, to a place suspended in time. The mansion was commissioned by wealthy art collector Édouard André and his wife Nélie Jacquemart. There are 17 rooms to wander through, and most have been left exactly as they were when the couple roamed the halls all those years ago. You will see The Grand Salon, The Music Room, The Italian Museum, The Study, the couples individual bedrooms and many others.

Édouard was the son of a prominent banking family, and Nélie herself was an artist. I read that the two had met when Édouard hired Nélie to paint his portrait. I thought what a sweet beginning that was to their love story. But it’s unclear whether theirs was a fairy tale love story, or if the two were ever even in love. It wasn’t until many years later that they married. When they did, Nélie kept her last name. This was extremely rare for women back then and a potential hint to the nature of their relationship. Of course, I had to know more about Nélie. The museum has a lot of information on her, but I did some sleuthing and uncovered some additional tidbits.

Jean-Marc Nattier: Portrait of the Marquise D’Antinand above it Sleeping Venus by François Boucher

There is information on Nélie in the book Femmes: Collectionneuses d’art et Mécènes by Julie Verlaine, who is a bit of a badass in her own right. She is an art historian and associate professor at the Sorbonne. According to the Sorbonne website her research focuses on “the relationship between art and society in contemporary times, with a particular focus on the art market, the history of public and private collections, and the question of artistic relations of gender boundaries and the transgressions of the masculine and feminine.” Her books are written in French, and not having found any trace of an English version, I had to muster through with my somewhat limited French. But it’s no wonder that Julie has included Nélie in her work.

Nélie, pronounced Naylie, and short for Cornélie, was born in Paris in 1841. She never knew her father, he died not long after she was born. However, the wife of her father’s employer, Paméla Hainguerlot, took the young Nélie under her wing when she saw how talented she was. The De Vatry’s (Paméla’s husbands last name was De Vatry) owned a hunting lodge on the grounds of the former Chaalis Abbey, about 25 miles outside of Paris. Paméla and Nélie spent the summers there together, mingling with prominent bankers and politicians. It is here that Nélie was introduced to the renowned art teacher and portrait painter, Léon Cogniet. Back then, women weren’t allowed to go to art school, an echoing sentiment from another post that I wrote about Camille Claudel, muse to Rodin. But Paméla facilitated an arrangement for Nélie to study in Cogniet’s studio. Although the classes were not taught by Cogniet, they were taught by his sister.

Nélie’s work started to become noticed, and at the young age of 22, she had her first showing at the Salon de Paris. She won several medals for her portraits and even had one displayed at the Palais des Tuileries, a royal palace that once stood where the Louvre currently stands.

While studying in Italy she met Geneviève Bréton, and the two quickly became friends. Geneviève kept a diary chronicling her life and relationships during that time. The diary has been translated into English and put into book form. It reveals so much about how life was for her, and her close friend Nélie back then. The book is called In the Solitude of My Soul: The Diary of Geneviève Bréton, it is available on Amazon if you want to check it out. In this diary she wrote about Nélies deep desire to be married.

After getting regular portrait requests, including one to paint the President, Nélie was commissioned to do a portrait of the prominent art collector, Édouard André. So this is when they first meet.

Knowing that the two eventually marry, my mind is filled with whimsical, romantic scenarios. Nélie arriving at Édouard’s home in a horse-drawn carriage in the late afternoon, her artists satchel, full of brushes, slung across her body. The two flirtatiously bantering while Nelie worked, occasionally scolding him for not holding still. However, many people believe that the relationship between the two was one of convenience. A business arrangement between two people who shared a passion for art. It was, after all, almost ten years later that they eventually married. And when they did marry, Nélie kept her own surname. It was highly unusual for a woman to keep her maiden name back then. A lovely term called couverture meant that you were under your father’s cover until you married, at which time you then came under your husband’s cover, including taking his last name.

According to Catherine Allgor’s article on womenshistory.org, the legal practice of coverture – basically says that “no female person has a legal identity”. Coverture in Europe, as well as most other parts of the world, was the accepted norm. However, there were some very rare exceptions. If a woman had her own money, or property, or had achieved her own professional standing in society, then it was possible for her to retain her own last name. Nélie already had her own fairly impressive collection of art. By the time she married Édouard she was making a good living from her portrait work. This makes me think back to her mentor, Pamela Hainguerlot, who also kept her maiden name. Did the two women discuss this? I try to imagine their conversations. Did they talk about couverture? Maybe they both had strong opinions about the subject. Perhaps her mentor set the stage for Nélie all those years ago. Pamela was, after all, the heiress of Chateau de Villandry.

During the course of their thirteen year marriage, Édouard and Nélie amassed a large and very notable collection of art. They loved traveling almost as much as purchasing art, and they were often gone for months at a time. They traveled all through Europe and even to Egypt, snapping up pieces wherever they went; including the Tiepolo Frescoes that they acquired in Italy, which still hang in the museum in Paris. The couple loved to entertain and they hosted extravagant parties where hundreds of people would attend. It brought them great joy to show off their collection and talk about their new pieces.

Sadly, Édouard died 28 years before Nélie, in 1894. After his death his family, mainly cousins, tried to steal his wealth and property, including the art collection. His family fought hard but eventually lost, and Nélie was able to keep everything. She had a signed copy of Édouard’s will that left their joint collection to her after his death. For several years Nélie continued to purchase art and add to their collection. Then, in 1902, she learned that the Chaalis Abbey property, that belonged to Pamela Haigeurlot, was for sale. Having fond childhood memories of this place she immediately purchased it and moved some of her furnishings as well as a part of her art collection there. It is here that Nélie Jacquemart-André is buried. She did eventually begin to hyphenate her last name.

One thing that is certain is that the couple both wanted the same thing to happen to their art collection when they died. It is said that Nélie and Édouard had agreed, together, before he died, that the mansion would be left to the Institute of France and turned into a museum. In Nélie’s will, she left both properties, the Paris mansion, and the Chaalis Abbey to the Institute of France. Today, both properties are museums.

Perhaps the only people who know for certain the true nature of the pairs relationship are Nélie and Édouard. For the rest of us, it leaves a glorious amount of room for our imaginations to run wild, especially while walking through the halls of the mansion.

I encourage you to download the museums app, you can find it in the App Store. It serves as an audio guide that you can listen to while visiting the museum. There is also a restaurant and tea room on site called Le Nélie that is set in the couples former dining room. They serve brunch on Saturday and Sundays starting at 11:00 and tea in the afternoons from 3:00 to 5:30. They also have a special menu on Friday evenings that includes cheese and charcuterie boards, wine and Champagne.

Museé Jacquemart-André
158 Boulevard Haussmann
75008, Paris, France
Phone: 33 1 45 62 11 59

Hours:
Monday to Thursday 10:00AM to 6:00PM
Friday 10:00AM to 10:00PM
Saturday & Sunday 10:00AM to 7:00PM

Closest metro lines to the museum are lines 9 & 13

Chaalis Abbey
Phone: +33 3 44 54 04 02
60300 Fontaine-Chaalis, France

Hours:
Monday through Sunday 10:00AM to 5:00PM

Domaine Chaalis is not easy to get to but it’s totally worth the trek. You have to take the RER train to CDG airport and then from there find the bus stop, which is only about a 5 minute walk. The stop you want is Roissy Pôle Quai F1. Board the Réseau Oise bus #630 toward Creil. After about 30 minutes on the bus you get off at Gare Routière. From here you get on bus #636 toward Le Plessis-Belleville. It’s about a 10 minute ride, after 3 stops you get off at Ermenonville-Mer de Sable. From here it’s about a 5 minute walk to the Domaine. If you have a car it’s only 30 miles from Paris.

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