Musée Marmottan Monet

The Musée Marmottan Monet is a museum in a 19th-century mansion at 2 Rue Louis-Boilly in Paris's 16th arrondissement, beside the Ranelagh gardens, holding the world's largest collection of works by Claude Monet, including Impression, Sunrise. It suits Impressionism fans who want a calmer visit than the big central museums.

From hunting lodge to museum

The building began as a hunting lodge at the edge of the Bois de Boulogne. In 1882 the industrialist Jules Marmottan bought it. His son Paul Marmottan, a historian and collector of the Napoleonic period, left the house and its contents to the Académie des Beaux-Arts when he died in 1932, and it opened as a museum in 1934.

Two later gifts changed its character. In 1957 Victorine Donop de Monchy gave Impressionist works inherited from her father, Dr Georges de Bellio, an early collector of the movement; among them was Impression, Sunrise. In 1966 Michel Monet, the painter's second son and only heir, left his inheritance of his father's work to the museum, making it the main home of Monet's art.

The theft of Impression, Sunrise

Painted in 1872, the view of the port of Le Havre whose title gave Impressionism its name has a dramatic history here. On 27 October 1985 armed robbers took it with several other paintings in a daylight raid. French police found the works in Porto-Vecchio, Corsica, in December 1990, and the painting returned to the walls in 1991.

Berthe Morisot, Renoir and First Empire pieces

Beyond Monet's work, from early pictures to the late water lilies of Giverny, the museum holds the largest collection of paintings by Berthe Morisot and works by Renoir, Degas, Sisley, Pissarro and Guillaumin. Paul Marmottan's First Empire paintings and furniture remain, along with medieval illuminated manuscripts. Temporary exhibitions on Impressionism and its circle run through the year.

How many Monets does the museum hold?

The Marmottan holds more than 300 paintings by Monet, the world's largest collection of his work, most of it from Michel Monet's 1966 bequest. A lower-floor gallery, inspired by the Water Lilies rooms at the Orangerie, shows the late Giverny paintings in sequence. Its Berthe Morisot holdings, more than 25 paintings with watercolours and pastels, are the largest public collection of her work, and the Wildenstein collection of illuminated manuscripts sits alongside. In 1985 Nelly Duhem added the collection of the painter Henri Duhem, including several Monets. The 1985 raid took nine paintings, valued at the time at USD 12 million.