Are you planning to visit the Rouen Museum of Fine Arts (Musée des Beaux-Arts) during your stay? Well, you’re absolutely right!
Located right in the heart of the city, the museum’s great diversity won us over. We were completely amazed by the richness of its collections, from Rubens to Modigliani, and including the key figure of Impressionism, Claude Monet. And what about the works by Caravaggio on display!
In this article, we’ll give you all our tips for discovering the museum and its many treasures.
This opinion is completely independent, based on our experiences. We visited the region anonymously, making our own choices, and paying all our bills in full.
Why visit the Rouen Museum of Fine Arts?
Is Rouen’s Musée des Beaux-Arts worth a visit?
Of course, we highly recommend a visit to the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen! It houses one of France’s most prestigious public collections. We discovered incredible paintings, sculptures and other objets d’art dating from the 15th century to the present day.
It is also home to works by such great artists as Rubens, Caravaggio, Velázquez, Géricault, Delacroix, Monet and Modigliani: Rubens, Caravaggio, Velázquez, Géricault, Delacroix, Monet and Modigliani. The list is not exhaustive. Our visit took us into different artistic worlds. What a pleasure it is to be able to enjoy such diversity within the museum!
Lovers of local history, we were also seduced by the exhibition on Joan of Arc. He is an emblematic figure in the history of Rouen. Of course it belongs in the museum!
Why is Rouen’s Musée des Beaux-Arts famous?
The museum is a benchmark for the richness of its holdings and the breadth of the artistic currents represented. It features extraordinary masterpieces by artists who can’t be ignored!
The museum also regularly hosts unique temporary exhibitions . In 2017, the exhibition “Boisgeloup, l’atelier normand de Picasso” was a great success. Its aim was to shed light on a little-known passage in Pablo Picasso‘s life. He lived in the Norman hamlet of Boisgeloup in the 1930s.
Our favorite moments
During our visit to the museum, we had a few favorites. We are aware that everyone’s artistic sensibilities are different. Nevertheless, we’d like to share our 3 favorite moments with you:
- The Joan of Arc exhibition, spotlighting a great woman in history.
- The play of light in paintings by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, known as Caravaggio.
- The poetry of Claude Monet’s “Champ de coquelicots, environs de Giverny”.
History in brief
The museum was created following the French Revolution and the Chaptal decree of 1801. It was only in 1809 that it was inaugurated with a collection of 244 paintings. In the 19th century, it took a new turn with the enrichment of its collections. In 1878, it housed 600 works and became one of the most complete museums in France. As a result, the museum needs to be enlarged.
But who built Rouen’s Musée des Beaux-Arts? The architect Louis Sauvageot completed the entire museum in 1888. Weakened during the 20th century, the building underwent a complete renovation under the direction of Andrée Putman, which was completed in 1994. This great interior designer was an icon of French taste. She revolutionized design.
Throughout its two centuries of existence, the museum’s collection has continued to grow, thanks to exceptional donations and purchases”.
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Practical tips: Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen, France
Where is the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen?
The museum is located Esplanade Marcel Duchamp in Rouen (76000), Normandy.
- Driving time from Le Havre: 1h10min.
- Driving time from Deauville: 1h10min.
- Driving time from Caen: 1h30min.
- Time from Cabourg: 1h15min.
- Driving time from Mont-Saint-Michel: 2h35min.
- Driving time from Ouistreham: 1h35min.
How to get there
We recommend you travel to Rouen by train. The train station offers regular services to Le Havre, Dieppe, Yvetôt, Elbeuf, Caen and Paris. Once you’ve arrived at Rouen station, it’s a 6-minute walk to the museum.
See available timetables and book your train and coach tickets now.
You can also drive to Rouen, and park in a parking lot near the museum. The town is within easy reach of other Normandy towns such as Le Havre, Caen and Deauville. From Paris, the journey takes 2 hours. Crossing the Seine can quickly create traffic jams.
OUR ADVICE FOR RENTING A CAR IN Normandy
- Compare prices on our preferred platform: DiscoverCars – one of the best rated sites.
- Choose a car that is comfortable enough (distances can be long) but compact (some parking lots and villages are narrow).
- Think of thecomplete insurance (some roads are tortuous and narrow).
- There is a lot of demand, book it early.
You can also take public transport. The museum is accessible by bus on the astuce network. Get off at Square Verdrel (rue Jeanne-d’Arc) or Beaux-Arts (rue Lecanuet). You can also take the metrobus to the museum. You’ll need to stop at Gare SNCF or Palais de Justice station.
Parking
The museum has no dedicated parking lot.
On the other hand, it’s very easy to find parking nearby. These include Q-Park at 12 Rue du Bailliage. It’s just a 1-minute walk to the museum. Alternatively, users also recommend Parking de l’Hôtel de Ville, a 7-minute walk from the museum.
Schedules and rates
Schedules:
The museum is open daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., except Tuesdays.
Closed on January 1, May 1, November 1 and 11 and December 25.
Rates:
The museum is free, as are all the city’s public museums. It also hosts temporary exhibitions for which a charge may be made.
The museum also occasionally organizes activities for families, children and people with disabilities. Visit the official website to find out about upcoming events!
Best time to visit the museum
The museum is always busy between 10am and 5pm. Its free access and location explain why it is so popular. Local school groups are frequent visitors. However, we recommend that you visit us at opening time, or at the end of the day. Lunchtime can also be a good alternative for getting around the crowds.
Visit duration and practical information
In our opinion, you should allow at least 1h30 to visit the museum. As lovers of fine art, we could easily have stayed for half a day. In fact, the museum boasts a wealth of collections and incredible works of art. It’s easy to lose yourself in the contemplation of the paintings on display.
For people with reduced mobility, the museum has several staircases and elevators. Disabled access is available at 26 bis, rue Jean Lecanuet.
Tips for visiting
The direction of travel within the museum is well indicated. The color-coded map made it easy to find our way around. Each collection has its own colorful universe. We really appreciated the organization of the premises. However, the order of the rooms is not always intuitive, as the museum is made up of many rooms of varying sizes. In general, the arrows make it easy to find your way around.
We began our visit on level 1, in the right-hand section of the museum, which focused on the Renaissance. All we had to do was follow the arrows that guided us from one room to the next. We then went up to level 2, still on the right-hand side of the museum. We went through exhibitions on France and Italy in the 17th century.
Once we’d visited the right-hand section, we moved on to the left-hand part of level 2. It contains French works dating from the 19th century, among others. Finally, we headed back down to level 1 to visit the left-hand section, which surprised us with its modern art exhibition.
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The Rouen Museum of Fine Arts with children
The museum is child-friendly, as it frequently welcomes school groups. It’s very easy to get around. It’s spacious. It also provides educational booklets for children.
The museum also offers a guided tour entitled “Un dimanche en famille”. It lasts 1h15 and costs €4 per person. For more information, visit their official website.
Nearby restaurants
The museum has a dining area in the sculpture garden. The MBA-Café opens every day between 12pm and 3pm. Here you can enjoy breakfast, lunch or just a snack. Visit their official website for more information.
If you’d like to eat outside the museum, Rouen has a great range of restaurants. There’s something for every taste and budget. Here’s our small selection specially designed for you:
- Restaurant L’Odas – excellent Michelin-starred restaurant overlooking Rouen Cathedral. We have devoted an article to this magnificent building.
- Restaurant Le Jehanne at the Blu Radisson Hotel – quality cuisine in a relaxed chic setting.
- Restaura nt L’Épicurius – bistronomic cuisine in a warm atmosphere.
- Café Pâtisserie EMJI – A delicious sweet break in the heart of Rouen.
WHERE TO STAY IN Rouen
Option 1: in the old town center
A charming historic heart, museums and attractions around every corner… We recommend..:
- Gustave Flaubert Literary Hotel with lots of quotes – see prices, photos and availability.
- Hôtel de Bourghteroulde set in a 16th-century residence – see prices, photos and availability.
Option 2: near the station
Just a 10-minute walk from the historic center, you’ll find more modern options. We recommend..:
- Blu Radisson Hotel next to the Jeanne d’Arc Tower – see prices, photos and availability.
- Hotel de Dieppe Best Western and its Art-deco ambience – see prices, photos and availability
The exceptional collections of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen
The museum houses one of France’s most prestigious public collections. It brings together paintings, sculptures and objets d’art dating from the 15th century to the present day.
Through its works, the museum explores a wide range of artistic trends. These are the major movements you’ll be able to discover:
- The Renaissance,
- Baroque Europe,
- The great French century,
- Impressionism,
- Romanticism,
- Rouen,
- Genre painting in 18th-century France.
The museum also boasts several other collections: landscapes, still lifes, icons, portraits, the salon, the drawing room and sculptures.
Among the exceptional personalities you’ll come across: Rubens, Caravaggio, Géricault, Joan of Arc, Modigliani, Monet, Velasquez, Jacques Émile Blanche, Andromaque, Jouvenet, and many more!
Artistic stroll from the 14th to the 17th centuries
Our visit began on level 1 on the right-hand side of the building. In this part of the museum, we’ve travelled through several centuries. First, we took a tour of the Renaissance, before plunging into 16th and 17th century France and Europe.
We then went up to level 2 to continue the tour. This part of the museum is dedicated to 17th-century France and Italy, and to Joan of Arc. You’ll notice that the different rooms in the museum are not painted the same color. We really appreciated the play of colors, which gave depth to the works! In the rest of our article, we’ll go into more detail about the exhibits in Part 1 of the museum.
Renaissance paintings
We began our tour of this artistic period with a plunge into the Italian Renaissance. A pivotal period in history, the Renaissance was also an artistic movement. It originally spread to Italy in the 14th and 15th centuries, and then throughout Europe.
The Renaissance is a philosophical movement that places the human being at the center of the universe. This theory is called humanism. However, Christianity continues to play an important role. We can see this in the oil paintings below. The place of Christ is still predominant.
We then continued our exploration through the European Renaissance. Our eyes were immediately drawn to “Diana’s Bath”, an enigmatic painting depicting nymphs in a bucolic setting. We found this work very poetic. The paleness of the naked bodies and the movement of the sheets lend a softness to the painting.
The rise of humanism favored the emergence of portraiture, as it allowed us to put the human figure in the spotlight. In the painting above, the artist combines portraiture and ancient fable. We were impressed by François Clouet’s ingenuity. He worked for the Court and distinguished himself in the art of portraiture. Indeed, we could have lost a few more minutes in the contemplation of his work!
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Caravaggio, the master of chiaroscuro
Once we reached level 2, our visit continued with an immersion in 17th-century France and Italy. Along the way, we were pleasantly surprised to come across a world-renowned Italian Baroque painter. Real name Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Caravaggio is particularly renowned for his mastery of chiaroscuro. This is a painting technique that consists in creating areas of light on a dark background.
In the painting “Christ at the Column”, the chiaroscuro technique highlights Christ’s body. He appears sublime and powerful, like an ancient statue. We also really liked the color of the walls. This intense red stands in stark contrast to the darkness of the painting. It also enhances the frame’s golden tones.
Once again, we were impressed by the artist’s talent. In “The Flagellation of Christ”, the contrast between the Christ haloed in light and the surrounding half-light is striking. He is so central to the picture that his tormentors take a back seat in the shadows. As fans of Caravaggio’s work, we were particularly pleased to be able to view some of his paintings at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rouen. If, like us, you’re a fan, we highly recommend a visit to the Musée des Arts de Nantes, which features several paintings by artists from the reality movement.
The epic of Joan ofArc
As you may already know, Joan of Arc is a major figure in Rouen. She died there, burnt alive by the English. So you’ll come across her all over town, and especially at the Joan of Arc Museum. You can also access a dedicated tour on the official tourist office website.
Unsurprisingly, the museum also wishes to pay tribute to him. We really enjoyed this exhibition, which combines paintings, photographs and bronze sculptures. It reveals the different facets of the heroine, and the construction of a veritable myth. Joan of Arc takes many forms, but she always embodies a living force.
Even in her sleep, the young woman exudes a unique aura. In the above painting, the painter has depicted her as a peasant, a warrior and a future saint. Surprisingly, the cult of Joan of Arc almost disappeared in the 17th and 18th centuries. It was the excesses of the Revolution that curiously allowed it to regain a place in the French national narrative in the 19th century.
In this exhibition, all the works interact with each other. Indeed, the various bronze statuettes depict Jeanne as a powerful figure. However, the photographs in the background depict her more as a martyr. We wondered about our perception of the young woman thanks to this exhibition. How do you perceive Jeanne?
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Immersion in 18th- to 19th-century painting
We continued our visit by discovering the left-hand side of level 2. This section of the museum took us on a journey through 18th- and 19th-century France and Italy. We particularly enjoyed this part of our visit, which dealt with Impressionism and Modern Art. We were lucky enough to see some exceptional paintings!
France and Italy from the 18th to the 19th century
Throughout the museum, you’ll see a number of scale models of buildings in Rouen. This is a representation of the Hôtel de Villle in Rouen, dating from 1758. We really liked the fact that local history was also highlighted.
As you can see from our photos, the museum also exhibits musical instruments. In this room, we discovered beautifully crafted harps and a piano. Once again, we were impressed by the richness of the collection.
We were then absorbed by Théodore Géricault’s work, immersed in an intense blue décor. His paintings are marked by the profound suffering of his characters. They are very dark and enigmatic. Sensitive souls are advised to abstain, as you may see bloody human body parts and corpses. The royal blue of the walls strangely enhances the paintings.
Théodore Géricault is a famous painter from Normandy. He is particularly famous for his painting “The Raft of the Medusa”. In fact, in the painting below, the portrait depicts the carpenter of the Medusa. We were really sucked into the painter’s work. They are mesmerizing.
Then we crossed paths with a 19th-century contemporary. Eugène Delacroix is also exhibited at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rouen. Best known for his painting “Liberty Guiding the People”, we were delighted to be able to contemplate some of this great painter’s more minor works.
In this 2nd section of the museum, you can discover other renowned artists, such as Jacques-Emile Blanche. Both a painter and a society writer, he was a key figure of the Belle Époque and the interwar period. Despite his interest in the avant-garde, he remained rooted in a very figurative, traditional style. As you can see, the museum offers an impressive range of exhibits. With a resource like this, you’re bound to have plenty of favorites like us!
The museum’s Impressionists
Speaking of favorites, do you like Impressionism? This artistic movement emerged in Normandy (France) towards the end of the 19th century. The skies and landscapes of Normandy inspired the greatest Impressionist painters. In fact, every museum in Normandy has works representative of this movement. See our article on the Eugène-Boudin Museum in Honfleur.
Impressionism is mainly expressed in paintings of landscapes and scenes of life. In fact, we’ve really come to understand this through the museum’s collection. There are very few characters represented. Impressionist painters sought to retranscribe the sensations, light effects and movements of water. They depict the lives of their contemporaries, while adding a great deal of poetry. In the painting below, Camille Pissarro depicts the industrial revolution then boiling over in Rouen.
An exception to the rule is Auguste Renoir, whose painting “Jeune femme au miroir” (Young Woman with a Mirror) successfully combines Impressionism and portraiture. We stopped for a few minutes to contemplate this young woman with an angelic face lost in her own reflection.
We were then captivated by the works of Claude Monet. He was one of the founders of Impressionism. His work is captivating. He succeeds in transcribing his impressions into paint with brio. The colors, the play of textures, the movement in the strokes bring the scene to life.
We could have lost ourselves for hours in the contemplation of this canvas. It floats between dream and reality. Indeed, the scene is both precise and vague. The artist has chosen to leave an “intentional blur” that leaves the viewer free to interpret. If, like us, you’re a fan, we’ve organized a short tour of Normandy in the footsteps of the Impressionists.
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The Modern Art exhibition
Impressionism marks a turning point in the history of painting. This was the beginning of non-figurative representation and thus of modern art. In short, artists no longer seek to represent reality as it is, but rather to reinvent it. The collection includes drawings, paintings, sculptures and statues.
In this oil on canvas, Amedeo Clemente Modigliani painted a woman’s head in profile. We can see that the artist’s approach is resolutely modern. Indeed, the woman’s features are rather coarse, and the flat tones of color are dissociated from one another. We can feel the artist’s effort in his quest for deconstruction.
This lead work by Raymond Duchamp-Villon depicts an embrace between several individuals. We found it particularly curious that such a gentle act should be depicted through such a cold material. This sculpture is very organic, even if the silhouettes are vague. When we saw it, we immediately understood the subject of the work, even though it’s not figurative. Can you make out the intertwined bodies?
A quick aside about the organization of collections throughout the museum. We’ve gradually come to appreciate the evolution of painting over the centuries. It was really very instructive. In short, we thoroughly enjoyed this journey through the various artistic movements. We were impressed by the museum’s collection.
Contemplation in the sculpture garden
But the tour isn’t over yet! There’s still one more space for you to discover. The sculpture garden is a large hall where monumental pieces can be exhibited. This is also the entrance to the temporary exhibitions. We found the place very soothing, even though there are no trees or plants. Under the glass roof, the light is striking. It enhances the statues.
The sculptures blend perfectly with the very large-format paintings on display in the garden. In this painting entitled “Un repas de Noce à Yport”, Albert Fourié has immortalized a moment in family life. Interestingly, he started out as a sculptor before turning to painting. He’s a multi-talented artist!
In our opinion, the sculpture garden is the ideal place to end a visit to the building. It provides a link between the works and the outside world, where you can enjoy a gourmet break at the MBA Café. In conclusion, we warmly recommend a visit to the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen. You won’t be disappointed from start to finish!
OUR ADVICE FOR RENTING A CAR IN Normandy
- Compare prices on our preferred platform: DiscoverCars – one of the best rated sites.
- Choose a car that is comfortable enough (distances can be long) but compact (some parking lots and villages are narrow).
- Think of thecomplete insurance (some roads are tortuous and narrow).
- There is a lot of demand, book it early.
All our tips in this article were put into words with the help of Elisa.
