The Bonnat-Helleu Museum returns to the forefront

Bayonne Pyrénées-Atlantiques). Closed in virtual indifference more than fourteen years ago, the Bayonne Museum of Fine Arts, although more than a century old, seemed condemned to oblivion. But thanks to the stubbornness of the mayor, it is back to life today and is already establishing itself as a reference institution through the quality of its collection and its inventive museography.

He has come a long way. A first bequest in 1891 from Léon Bonnat (1833-1922), a native of Bayonne and great academic painter, encouraged the city to construct in 1896 a building in the eclectic style of the time designed by the architect Charles Planckaert and intended to house the city’s archives, a library and an art museum. The complex was inaugurated in 1901, but the museum did not really open until a few years later. It turned out to be too small to accommodate a second bequest from the Bonnat collection upon his death, consisting of around 2,000 additional works, including numerous masterpieces. It was only in the 1970s, after the library moved, that the museum was able to fully occupy the building, welcome new donations and deploy all its missions. In 2011, on the eve of its closure due to the risk of the glass roof of the patio collapsing, it occupied 164th place in the List of museums in the Arts Journal and welcomed 25,000 visitors.

The interventions carried out by the architectural firm BLP & Associés based in Bordeaux are extensive without being ostentatious. The firm distinguished itself in particular in the renovation of the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris between 2000 and 2006. The most structuring project consisted of extending the museum towards the adjacent construction dating from the 1930s and occupied until recently by a school. It was necessary to drill openings between the two sites, bring the levels to the same level and harmonize the two facades. The main entrance to the museum has been moved to the part of the old school which joins the historic building. The visitor now enters a long reception hall which on one side overlooks the old school courtyard and on the other onto the interior patio of the museum.

At the opposite corner, the architects built a high wing, made of modern glass walls breaking with the neo-classical style. This extension made it possible to install a freight elevator and provide rest areas open to the outside for visitors. Recovering the initial volumes and natural lighting obscured by the renovations of the 1970s in the historic building was a major guideline for the architects. And from this point of view, it’s quite successful, the circulation between all the spaces is fluid and airy, with an impression of solidity provided by the quality of the materials.

A more spacious space

This work allowed the museum to double its surface area to reach 7,000 m², including 2,500 m² for the permanent exhibition and 450 m² for temporary exhibitions, which are less well housed in a hall which will be difficult to arrange. Offices, reserves and a research room were moved to the old school, freeing up all the space in the 1901 building for the benefit of the permanent collection which is partly spread around the patio. There are no plans for the moment to develop the atrium in order to give full scope to the mosaic from the beginning of the century, created by the same mosaicist as that of the Grand Palais in Paris and which in a certain way echoes the immense triptych fresco which occupies the top of the north facade (see ill. p. 11). This represents Léon Bonnat, already elderly, sitting on a bench overlooking the two rivers which cross Bayonne, surrounded by painters from the “Bayonne school”, with a gesture of the arm symbolizing the donation of the works.

Because this modernized setting serves a collection that is basically little known despite the masterpieces it contains. It is based first of all on the nearly 3,000 works donated by Léon Bonnat to national museums – in fact the Louvre – with the obligation of permanent deposit at the Bayonne Museum. Due to this special status, it is therefore the Louvre which grants or not grants to other museums. A sign of the quality of the works: two paintings were recently loaned by the museum to the MET in New York. Thanks to his very comfortable income from commissions for portraits which he charged very dearly to the sponsors, Léon Bonnat was able to acquire numerous works by old masters or his previous generation. We don’t count Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Rembrandt, Rubens, El Greco, Murillo, Simon Vouet, Goya, but also Géricault and Ingres that the painter acquired.

This collection was later enriched by bequests and donations from Antonin Personnaz (1937), Jacques Petithory (1992) and Paulette Howard-Johnston (1989 and 2011), daughter of the painter Paul Helleu (1859, 1927). The Helleu donation, accompanied by a large sum of money to exhibit the artist’s collection, stipulated that the museum must also bear the name of the engraver, so that the Museum of Fine Arts of Bayonne finds itself burdened with a name which does not facilitate its identification by the public. Unfortunately all these generous donors, starting with Bonnat, had no particular sympathies for the “moderns”, chronologically limiting the permanent journey to the art of the Belle Époque but in fact to the academic art of the 19th century. Another bias of the collection lies in the virtual absence of 19th and early 20th century landscapes and, correlatively, an omnipresence of the human figure.

Despite these constraints, but thanks to the richness of the collection, the director of the Museum Barthélemy Etchegoyen-Glama was able to build a chrono-thematic journey worthy of the best fine arts museums and of which Pierre Rosenberg says “that it is the most beautiful collection between Paris and Madrid”. Moreover, nearly 300 researchers come to the museum each year to study this corpus; the director hopes that there will be many more of them thanks to the new research room. The first room, more thematic than chronological, allows us to show the richness of the collection through the theme of the body at all times. The following 20 rooms unfold a temporal thread with each time a particular subject: religious then civil power for the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, portraits of the Dutch Golden Age with several Rubens and Rembrandts, the French 17th century with a magnificent Simon Vouet, sketching in the 18th century, and of course the 19th century over-represented by focuses on Bonnat and Helleu.

An exceptional museum tour

Nearly 1,000 works are thus exhibited, in a display that the director wanted to be fluid, airy, which leaves room for emotion. “ The “museum of emotion” is a museum that appeals to the senses before appealing to reason. It’s a museum that encourages viewers to immerse themselves in the works immediately,” he explains. “The Mona Lisa” of the museum that is the Bather of Ingres is thus shown isolated on a large wall. Most of the works benefit from an educational cartel. While in many museums, the drawings are exhibited in separate rooms, those in Bayonne are presented in display cases inserted all along the route. But visitors will have the opportunity, by appointment and with a mediator, to consult the graphic masterpieces in a dedicated space. Two thirds of the way through, a surprise awaits visitors: a huge wall presents, in an edge-to-edge display typical of 19th century salons, dozens of works of all formats which respond to each other in a semantic or formal dialogue. The viewer can appreciate this ensemble at the foot of the wall or in a mezzanine on the floor above. Guaranteed effect, like the general impression that emerges from the tour where each room offers to see works of the level of the Louvre or the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon, magnified by numerous restorations.