The musée Jacquemart-André is not a lifeless place, but rather a home designed to welcome, to host, and to share beauty.
On Boulevard Haussmann, the musée Jacquemart-André retains all the atmosphere of an inhabited place: one does not visit a lifeless museum, but rather one enters a home designed to welcome, to host, and to share beauty.
For this private mansion is not just a showcase for an exceptional collection: it bears the living imprint of a couple - Édouard André and Nélie Jacquemart - united by a shared, profound, almost vital taste for discovering the arts.
Born in 1833 into a prominent banking family, Édouard began his career in the army before turning to politics. The André family were visionary merchants who invested in major European financial centres such as London, Geneva, and Paris.
In the Belle Époque, their names were circulated with the same reverence as those of the Rothschilds or Laffitte families. However, Edouard was also interested in another field: art. A passionate patron of the arts, he invested part of his fortune in collecting 17th century Dutch canvases and 18th century French works. He became president of the Union centrale des arts décoratifs and even bought the prestigious Gazette des beaux-arts.
Cornélie Jacquemart came from a modest background and owed her rise to Madame de Vatry, chatelaine at Chaalis, who affectionately called her Nélie. Madame Vatry spotted Nélie's talent for drawing and arranged for her to take classes with Léon Cogniet, a professor at the Beaux-Arts. Success was not long in coming: by the age of 22, Nélie was already exhibiting in the salons, accumulating medals and commissions, notably in a genre then reserved for men: the male portrait.
Fate brought them together in 1872 when Édouard commissioned a portrait from the young painter. Nine years later, they married. Nélie gave up her career to devote herself and her husband to enlarging their collection.
From the moment it was built, the mansion that was to become a museum bore the stamp of ambition and refinement. The project was entrusted to Henri Parent, who had been left out of the construction of what was to become the Palais Garnier. For the architect, it was a unique opportunity to demonstrate his talent. The house was not just a place of residence: it was a veritable showcase, a place where receptions were conceived down to the last detail.
The mansion's aesthetics are impressive, as are the layout of the rooms, colonnades and salons, which are designed to welcome and circulate guests with great fluidity. One of the salons in particular catches the eye: the one dedicated to music. Adorned with a ceiling by Pierre-Victor Galland, featuring Apollo enthroned among the muses, it housed a Cavaillé-Coll organ until 1920, a masterpiece of musical craftsmanship on which Édouard loved to play. The couple hosted soirées in the intellectual Paris of the Belle Époque, and were renowned for their hospitality.
Here, you'll meet a host of leading composers and musicians, including Jules Massenet, Reynaldo Hahn, Claude Debussy, Camille Saint-Saëns, and even organist Marcel Dupré. Concerts were frequent, sometimes religious in the morning, social in the evening. Music is not merely a form of entertainment.
It was a breath of fresh air that kept the hotel's heart beating, and one that Nélie would nurture right up to her final days. Émile Waldteufel, a well-known composer of the time, even dedicated his famous The Ice Skaters waltz to her, a piece whose melody is bound to bring back fond memories, and which today is played every year at the Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's concert: a rare gesture, which speaks volumes of the esteem in which Nélie was held, and the interest she took in music.
In 1894, Édouard passed away. Nélie continued their work alone, enriching the collection, traveling the world, acquiring sculptures, objets d'art and antique paintings. Passionate and gifted in business, she was a true source of inspiration, particularly for Béatrice de Rothschild. On her death in 1912, she bequeathed 1,200 works to the Institut de France. The following year, the museum was opened to the public under the aegis of President Raymond Poincaré. Over 800 visitors flocked to the museum on the very first day, proof of the response to this extraordinary artistic adventure.
Even today, in the museum's upper gallery, the organ vibrates under the fingers of guest organists, and works by Debussy, Verdi, Saint-Saëns and many others are regularly heard, as a discreet tribute to this love story between a banker and a painter, between two worlds united by a love of the arts.
Photo 1: Nélie Jacquemart, Self-portrait, ca. 1880, oil on canvas, musée Jacquemart André, Paris - © Institut de France / Studio Sébert Photographes
Photo 2: Nélie Jacquemart, Edouard André's Portrait, 1872, oil on canvas, musée Jacquemart-André, Paris - © Institut de France / Studio Sébert Photographes
Photo 3: Nélie Jacquemart and Edouard André - © Institut de France / Studio Sébert Photographes
Photo 4: Library © Culturespaces / Thomas Garnier
Photo 5: Musicians gallery © Culturespaces / Sophie Lloyd
Photo 6: Grand Salon © Culturespaces / Sophie Lloyd
Photo 7: Winter Garden © Culturespaces - Nicolas Héron
Photo 8: Painting Room © Culturespaces - Christophe Recoura
Photo 9: Music Room © Culturespaces - Thomas Garnier
Cover image: Musée Jacquemart-André façade © Culturespaces - Nicolas Héron
