L'exposition « Face au ciel, Paul Huet en son temps »

On the occasion of the museum's reopening on 14 February, after renovation, and echoing the new permanent collections display, the Musée de la Vie romantique pays tribute to Paul Huet (1803-1869) and his passion for skies.

A contemporary of Eugène Delacroix, and an admirer of early 19th-century English painters, Huet, long before the Impressionists, managed to free landscape painting from academic rigour, imbuing it with the energy of living nature. Facing the sky, he sought to convey emotion and make perceptible the movement of the air, the light of a storm, or the clarity of a lull. Through some fifty works, this presentation traces the journey of a free artist, a great traveller, self-taught, both romantic and contemporary with realist painters. It also places his work within the development of landscape painting in the 19th century, alongside major figures such as Théodore Rousseau, Camille Corot, and Eugène Boudin, who made the sky a true poetic language. Following the painter's life, the exhibition invites you on a journey divided into five sections: "À la découverte du paysage" (Discovering Landscape), "Paul Huet : le ciel, une passion précoce" (Paul Huet: The Sky, an Early Passion), "Dans l’arène des expositions officielles" (In the Arena of Official Exhibitions), "Le ciel dans tous ses états" (The Sky in All its States), and "Le ciel transfiguré" (The Transfigured Sky).

Alexis NOËL, Le Col du Grand Saint-Bernard, 1835, oil on canvas, 113 x 166 cm – Chambéry, Musée des Beaux-Arts; Credits: Photo © RMN-Grand Palais - Thierry Ollivier