The name Musée de la Vie Romantique (Museum of Romantic Life) can be a bit misleading if you’ve never actually visited. Despite its proximity to Pigalle and the sex shops of Boulevard Marguerite-de-Rochechouart, the museum has nothing to do with romance or love. As a result, tourists who hear the name for the first time and realize it’s not some cousin of the Museum of Erotica, which closed a few years ago, sometimes skip it, and that’s a big mistake.
It’s one of those secret gems known mostly to advanced Francophiles. The reason is that the Musée de la Vie Romantique hides away in one of the most charming, yet least known, neighborhoods of Paris: La Nouvelle Athènes (New Athens).
This neighborhood, located in the 9th arrondissement, was built during the first half of the 19th century. It got its name both from its buildings, some of them built in a neoclassical style, and from the many intellectuals who lived there.
On Rue Chaptal stands a small villa that became a meeting place for the entire intellectual and artistic elite of Paris. Who didn’t stop by? The poet Alphonse de Lamartine (1790-1869), the writer and poet Victor Hugo (1802-1885), the painter Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863), and many more.
What was so special about this villa, and why did it eventually become the “Musée de la Vie Romantique”? Who lived there? And most importantly, why should you make a point of visiting it on your next trip to Paris? I’m happy to answer all of these questions right now.
Who Lived in the Little Villa on Rue Chaptal?
Two people, a man and a woman, one fairly obscure and the other far more famous, lived here during the 19th century. The first was the painter Ary Scheffer (1795-1858), and the second was Amantine Aurore Lucile Dupin de Francueil, better known to us as the writer George Sand (1804-1876). Since the Musée de la Vie Romantique is dedicated to both of them, it’s worth getting to know each one a little before we visit.
Ary Scheffer
The painter Ary Scheffer was born in the city of Dordrecht in the Netherlands in 1795, into a family of painters. Since he showed real talent for painting from a young age, he was sent to study art in Amsterdam at age 11, and in 1811 he moved to Paris along with his two brothers: the future journalist Arnold Scheffer (1796-1853) and the painter Hendrik Scheffer (1798-1862).
During their first years in Paris, Ary Scheffer and his brothers studied at the art school in the 6th arrondissement under the painter Pierre-Narcisse Guérin (1774-1833). There they met the man who would become the greatest of the Romantic painters, Eugène Delacroix, who studied under the same teacher.
In 1822, Ary Scheffer became the drawing teacher of the children of the Duke of Orléans, who would become King Louis-Philippe I eight years later. A warm relationship formed between the painter and the royal family, which meant that during Louis-Philippe’s reign (1830-1848), Ary Scheffer received no shortage of commissions.
Ary Scheffer’s most talented student was Princess Marie d’Orléans (1813-1839), who, thanks to his teaching, became one of the first women in art history to work as a sculptor. The princess died of tuberculosis at a young age, but she managed to create several impressive sculptures, some of which can be found in the museum, as we’ll see shortly. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
In the same year that Louis-Philippe took power, Ary Scheffer moved into the house at 16 Rue Chaptal. He did so because the neighborhood was already known at the time for the artists and intellectuals who lived there. Ary Scheffer and his wife started hosting the cultural elite of their neighborhood every Friday, and as I mentioned in the introduction, many artists visited this house over the years, one of them being George Sand, whom I’ll get to shortly.
But in 1848, revolution broke out. Ary Scheffer, who was not only a painter but also an officer, helped the royal family escape the Tuileries Palace, and he even fought alongside the forces defending the king from the revolutionaries. None of it helped, though, and Louis-Philippe was forced to flee France with his family. After the change of government, Ary Scheffer stopped engaging in politics and devoted the last decade of his life to art. He died in 1858 of heart disease and was buried at the Montmartre Cemetery.
His illegitimate daughter, Francès Cornélie Marjolin-Scheffer (1830-1899), decided to buy the house where her father had lived (he had never actually owned it, only rented it). Cornélie was a talented pianist and lived in the house until her death in 1899.
After her death, the house passed to her relative Noémie Renan, daughter of the intellectual Ernest Renan. The house stayed in that family until 1983, when it was given in its entirety to the city of Paris to become the Renan-Scheffer Museum, honoring both families who had lived in the building. In 1987, after a major renovation, the museum reopened under a new name, the “Musée de la Vie Romantique,” since it now preserved the legacy not only of those who lived there but also of the cultural elite of the first half of the 19th century (known as the Romantic period in the history of France).
George Sand
One of the most famous creative figures of the period, who visited this house often along with her lover, the famous pianist and composer Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849), was George Sand, to whom the museum’s first floor is dedicated. In my opinion, knowing her fascinating life story can really enhance your visit to the museum, so let me give you a quick summary.
There’s no doubt this famous writer had a fascinating family history. Not everyone can claim descent from two royal illegitimate children (one from “Augustus the Strong,” King of Saxony, and the other the illegitimate son of Louis XV). Since I’ve already written about George Sand’s ancestors in this article, I won’t repeat it here and will focus on her life instead.
She grew up with her grandmother at a château in the town of Nohant, in the Berry region, and at age 18 she married Casimir Dudevant (1795-1871), with whom she had a son named Maurice (1823-1889) and a daughter named Solange (1828-1899). But a woman like George Sand was never going to resign herself to a dull marriage, and after a few years she set out on what she called her “romantic rebellion,” which ended in 1835 with a full divorce from her husband and custody of their children.
During and after her “romantic rebellion,” George Sand carried on a series of turbulent romances, including with the writer Alfred de Musset (1810-1857), the playwright Prosper Mérimée (1803-1870), known to us for his work “Carmen,” the politician Louis Blanc (1811-1882), and many others.
But without a doubt, George Sand’s most famous romance was with Frédéric Chopin. The relationship, which had no shortage of ups and downs, lasted about a decade and ended roughly two years before the composer’s death. George Sand and Chopin lived in the same neighborhood where the Musée de la Vie Romantique now stands, and their most famous home together was at Square d’Orléans, where the couple kept two separate apartments (if you thought living-apart-together relationships were a modern invention, think again).
George Sand had an unconscious tendency to be drawn to people in poor health, grow frustrated at having become a kind of nursemaid to them, and then abandon them. That’s exactly what happened with Alfred de Musset, whom she left during their trip to Italy, and it’s what happened with Chopin too (though the split with the composer was helped along by the fact that he sided with her daughter Solange during a conflict between them). Interestingly, both Alfred de Musset and Chopin died almost as neighbors: Chopin on Place Vendôme and Musset on Rue Mont Thabor, a short walk away (both are also buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery).
When she wasn’t living a turbulent romantic life, George Sand was writing. She wrote her first book, Rose et Blanche, in 1831 together with her then lover, the writer Jules Sandeau (1811-1882), and went on to write many more books that made her the most successful writer of her time (during the 1830s and 1840s she was even more successful than Honoré de Balzac and Victor Hugo).
Beyond being a writer, she was also quite politically active. During the 1840s she worked on behalf of ordinary people and the poor, and she was very active in the Revolution of 1848 (interestingly, she and Ary Scheffer, both honored by the Musée de la Vie Romantique, stood on opposite sides of the barricade). Later, after Napoleon III’s violent seizure of power, George Sand chose to stay in France and managed to save the lives of several revolutionaries who opposed the emperor.
Of course, there’s no ignoring that George Sand was also one of the earliest champions of women’s rights in her time, both by personal example (divorcing a husband she didn’t love, wearing trousers, and more) and through numerous literary works and pamphlets. Late in her life, after the Franco-Prussian War and the rise of the Paris Commune, George Sand surprised many by shifting to the right and demanding that the government crack down hard on the Communards because of the violence and destruction they had caused.
In her final years, George Sand took up painting, and some of her landscape paintings can be found at the Musée de la Vie Romantique. She died at her house in Nohant in 1876. In 1923, her granddaughter decided to hand over a large part of her estate, including furniture, paintings, and other artworks, to the city of Paris. These works were initially displayed at the Musée Carnavalet, but during the 1980s they were moved to the Musée de la Vie Romantique.
This made the museum one of only three literary museums in Paris (the other two are Victor Hugo’s house in the Marais and Balzac’s house in the 16th arrondissement). So when we visit the Musée de la Vie Romantique together, we’ll get to enjoy not only “ordinary” artworks but also ones connected to George Sand’s literary life.
Visiting the Musée de la Vie Romantique
Now that we know the story of the two main “characters” of the Musée de la Vie Romantique, it’s time to give you all the practical information you need for your visit. We’ll start with the basics (addresses, opening hours, and so on), and then I’ll write a bit about what you shouldn’t miss while you’re there.
Address and Getting There
Address: 16 Rue Chaptal.
You can get there by metro in three ways:
- Take line 2 and get off at Pigalle or Blanche
- Take line 13 and get off at Liège
- Take line 12 and get off at Saint-Georges
If you’d rather take the bus, you can take lines 30, 54, 67, 68, or 74.
Opening Hours and Ticket Prices
The Musée de la Vie Romantique is open daily except Mondays, from 10:00 to 18:00. The ticket counter closes at 17:40.
Admission to the permanent exhibits is free, but the painting studio near the entrance hosts rotating exhibitions that charge admission. To find out what exhibitions are running during your trip, feel free to check the exhibitions page on my site or the museum’s official website.
What Will You Find in the Museum?
It’s a small museum with two floors, each containing several rooms. The lower floor is dedicated to George Sand, while the upper floor is dedicated to Ary Scheffer and other painters from the first half of the 19th century.
Here’s a short but well-made video that will show you around the inside of the museum. It’s in French, but don’t worry: you already know the history of the place, and below you’ll find more information about what you can find in each of the museum’s rooms.
George Sand’s “Treasure Room”
I only treasure objects given to me by people I love. George Sand
Here you’ll find a long line of objects that belonged to the famous writer and were brought to the museum from her estate in Nohant. For example, you’ll find a portrait of Maréchal de Saxe (1696-1750), one of King Louis XV’s greatest generals and one of her ancestors. Alongside it are portraits of Chopin (including a sculpture of his hands), Delacroix, and other artists and intellectuals who visited the house.
George Sand’s Living Quarters and the Blue Drawing Room
In this charming room, you’ll find, among other things, the famous portrait of George Sand by Auguste Charpentier. You’ll also find furniture from the 18th century here.
In the Blue Room, you’ll find small landscape paintings by the famous writer, along with portraits of some of the most famous people of her time, including the actress Rachel Félix (1821-1858), the opera singer Maria Malibran (1808-1836), and others.
The Portrait Room from the Romantic Period
After finishing your visit to the ground floor, it’s time to head upstairs to the second floor (technically the first floor by European counting), dedicated to Ary Scheffer. In the first room on this floor, you’ll find a series of portraits of women painted by Scheffer. One of the most famous and beautiful portraits here is that of Pauline Viardot (1821-1910), a famous opera singer and the sister of Maria Malibran, who, unlike her sister, lived a long life.
The Orléans Family Room
This room is dedicated to the children of King Louis-Philippe I, who studied art under Ary Scheffer. Pay special attention to the sculptures by Marie d’Orléans, his most talented student. The dominant theme in all of these sculptures is the Middle Ages, which became hugely popular in French society, especially after Victor Hugo’s novel “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.”
The sculpture that immediately caught my eye was the one of Joan of Arc. It’s a miniature of a marble statue that can be found at the Palace of Versailles. It’s incredible how talented this princess was, and such a shame that she died so young.
Beyond that, you’ll find plenty of portraits of the Orléans family, who kept commissioning paintings from Ary Scheffer throughout his life. I didn’t photograph them during my last visit (October 2019), but I did photograph the dozing guard, and that’s a kind of artwork too, right? 🙂
Ary Scheffer’s Studio
Here you’ll find a good number of Ary Scheffer’s paintings. As you’ll see, one of his favorite genres was paintings depicting scenes from great literary works. So you’ll find images here depicting scenes from The Human Comedy or Goethe’s Faust. Here’s one of the beautiful paintings by Ary Scheffer that you can find in the museum:
Next to Scheffer’s studio, you’ll also find a room dedicated to Ernest Renan, the well-known theologian, whose son married a relative of Scheffer’s. Ernest Renan was a theologian who, for his research into the roots of Christianity, thoroughly learned Hebrew.
This room marks the end of the museum visit. Feel free to head back downstairs and even sit at the small, charming café in the garden. If you’re looking for more things to do nearby, I recommend checking out the article on attractions in the 9th arrondissement, or heading a bit north to visit Montmartre.
And finally, if you’re looking for walking routes in this area and others in Paris, feel free to check out this link.
Two walking routes pass right by the museum’s gate: the walking tour of the northern 9th arrondissement, which ends here, and the walking tour of Nouvelle Athènes, which starts here.
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