Musée Ingres Bourdelle, Montauban

The Musée Ingres Bourdelle is the art museum of Montauban in Occitanie, about 55 km north of Toulouse, set in a seventeenth-century bishops' palace where the Pont Vieux meets the old town. It is devoted to two artists born in the town, the painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and the sculptor Antoine Bourdelle, and suits art lovers and visitors on a day trip from Toulouse.

A palace on the Tarn

Bishop Pierre de Bertier commissioned the classical palace in 1664, its brick walls rising straight from the river. After the Revolution it became the town hall and later the museum, and it has been a listed historic monument since 1910. The lower part of the building is older: a basement room, the Hall of the Black Prince, takes its name from Edward the Black Prince, who built the medieval castle that once stood here, and now holds the archaeology collection.

Ingres's gifts and some 4,500 drawings

Ingres gave part of his collection to his home town in 1851, and the Ingres room opened in 1854. When he died in January 1867 his bequest added several thousand drawings, about 4,500 in all, kept in a conservation cabinet and shown in rotation. Paintings include The Dream of Ossian (1813) and a version of Roger Freeing Angelica (1841). The museum describes itself as the only one in the world dedicated to the painter, and it also shows his pupils' work and objects from his own collection.

The Bourdelle floor

A 36-month renovation costing €13.1 million ended with a reopening on 13 December 2019, when the museum added Bourdelle to its name. About 70 of his sculptures and some 100 works on paper, the largest Bourdelle collection in the region, now fill their own floor in the 2,700 square metre museum. Look for Heracles the Archer and his portrait busts.