Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille

About this place

The Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille is a municipal museum dedicated to fine arts, modern art, and antiquities located in Lille. It is one of the largest art museums in France. It was one of the first museums built in France, established under the instructions of Napoleon I at the beginning of the 19th century as part of the popularisation of art. Jean-Antoine Chaptal's decree of 1801 selected fifteen French cities to receive the works seized from churches and from the European territories occupied by the armies of Revolutionary France. The painters Louis Joseph Watteau and François-Louis-Joseph Watteau, known as the "Watteau of Lille", were heavily involved in the museum's beginnings - Louis Joseph Watteau made in 1795 the first inventory of the paintings confiscated during the Revolution, whilst his son François was deputy curator of the museum from 1808 to 1823. Notice how the building presents itself to the surrounding streets or landscape, then compare its public and more intimate spaces. This helps explain how architecture expressed the position, resources and ambitions of the people who commissioned it.