MUSEUM OF THE ORANGERIE

After reviewing the works of Claude Monet, our visit to the Museum of the Orangerie proceeds towards the ground floor and the "Collection of Jean Walter et Paul Guillaume". Knicknamed by Amedeo Modigliani "Novo Pilota", Paul Guillaume obviously had an important role among dealers and art collectors at the beginning of the twentyth century, choosing to acquire the works of young and talented painters. His artistic passions range from Matisse to Picasso, from De Chirico to Utrillo and Delaunay, Rousseau and Modigliani, not to mention a profound interest in Art Nouveau.
He passionately wished to found a "Society for Black Art and Archeology", and establish a lasting and prolific relationship with galleries and specialised magazines, so as to promote (also through exchanges ) new works of art. In I918, together with the poet Guillaume Apollinaire and the art critic Waldemar Gorge, he creates "The Arts in Paris", a review of current events and promotion of the arts. In the same year, he dedicates himself to organising two exhibitions, the first of Michail Larionov and Tatjana Gontcharova, the second to Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse.
The French poet and writer Max Jacob said: "Paul is a true lover of art, his canvasses and statues speak spontaneously", and it is perhaps just for this reason that his private collection, exhibited for the first time in 1929 at the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery in Paris, will establish him as a great collector of modern art in Europe. The collection will be appreciated later on, thanks also to an exhibition set up by Guillame himself in a large appartment in Avenue Foch in Paris ( certainly an"anomalous" operation in this epoch) placing his works against a light background, brought straight into the numerous rooms of his Paris appartment.

In the beginning this collection remained distinct from the works in other galleries he owned, while it has to be said that more and more often the pictures exhibited found no buyers, and were bought by Guillame himself, as in the case of Demoiselles à la rivière of Matisse.
At the same time, other works stayed for a short time in the museum-appartment in Avenue Foch, in exceptional circumstances as the owner was forced to sell them, in order to survive.
The determination to show the whole collection to an ever greater public, was what most clearly distinquished Paul Guillaume from other collectors of the epoch. Then, the fact that his works were continuously diffused through his magazine illustrates another foundamental fact - that a private individual could administer an important artistic patrimony better than the state. This determination marks a re-action on the part of the collector himself to the policy adopted by the Museum of Luxemburg and to the "old canvases" exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art; it is spelt out by Guillame himself that, in reaching out to the whole world of the "fine arts", he managed to serve the cause of Modern Art better than the French state. It is on just this occasion that Paul Gaullaume wished to go further: seeking to make his collection public he donated some works to national museums, including the Museum of Grenoble. Not content with this, he wished to open a sort of "hotel-museum" following the example of some American magnates, so as to be able later to cede the property to the State.

Putting this place, a "hotel museum", at the dispostion of art meant in a certain sense, making possible two things: on the one hand, managing in an exemplary way works of art, and on the other, being able to enjoy the use of a private space which clearly had the advantage of opening up to the public. Long bureaucratic and administrative delays together with lack of funds, and above all the premature death of Paul Gaullame at only forty five, left the project incomplete, but his work was not entirely wasted. A short time before his death, our benefactor collector gave the responsibilty of completing the project to his wife Domenica, transferring most of his works to The Louvre, with the aim of creating a new collection, leaving her, however, the possibility of selling some works in case of need. The wedding of Domenica and an architect who had accumulated considerable wealth in Marocco, enabled her to re-organise the whole collection. The collection lost, however, all the works of Picasso and of sculptures of Negro Art, but was enriched considerably by new works of Cezanne and Renoir. The whole collection was exhibited once again in a luxury appartment alongside furniture in Louis XV and XVI style; but it was only in 1957 that Domenica managed to make the collection accessible to the public. This operation was connected with the negotiations of Domenica with the French state over the alleged murder of her adopted son Jean Pierre. So from 1984 the collection has been exhibited in the Museum of the Orangerie, where it is possible to admire the numerous works of art exactly as exhibited before in the appartment situated in Rue du Cirque, which hosted the collection until 1960.