Two collectors

When visitors cross the museum threshold, they enter what was the private residence of a pair of inveterate collectors who devoted their entire lives to building their artwork collection.


Edouard André

Edouard André, the scion of a Protestant banking family, devoted his considerable fortune to buying works of art which he then exhibited in his new mansion, built on the new Boulevard Haussmann and completed in 1875.


Nellie Jacquemart

He married a well-known society painter, Nélie Jacquemart, who executed Edouard’s portrait.
Every year, the couple would travel in Italy, amassing one of the finest collections of Italian art in France as they went. 
When Edouard André died, Nélie Jacquemart completed the decoration of the Italian Museum and travelled in the Orient to add more precious works to her collection. Faithful to the plan agreed with her husband, she bequeathed the mansion and its collections to the Institut de France as a museum, which opened to the public in 1913.