 | In 1828, the city bought the former priory of Malta in order to move the Free School of Drawing there. In 1833, school director Clérian was named curator of the city's Museum of Fine Arts. Between 1857 and 1862, the young Paul Cézanne took classes there on live models and drawing imitations of antiquity, based on the plaster and marble sculptures kept at the museum. On August 25th, 1859, he won second prize in painting.
When he was taking classes there, Cézanne explored the rooms of the museum. He paused before Dubufe's “The Prisoner of Chilon” and Frillié's “The Kiss of the Muse”, which he copied. Cézanne admired the canvases by Granet and appreciated his portrait painted by Ingres. The self-portrait by Pierre Puget, “The Young Card Players” by the Le Nain brothers, “The Martyrdom of Saint Catherine” by Mattia Pretti all provoked his enthusiasm.
From 1892 to 1925, the sculptor Henri Pontier directed the school and the museum and was opposed to any work by Cézanne entering the city collections.
In 1949, the museum was named the Granet Museum to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the legacy to his hometown that the painter François Marius Granet (1775 - 1849) made of his collections and near entirety of his personal work.
Regarded as one of the richest museums of the province, with its 13,000 works, the Granet Museum arranged its collections around several strong focal points such as Egyptian archeology (from 2500 BC), the only Celto-Ligurian statuary in France, discovered in Entremont (3rd-2nd century BC), and the Roman origins of the city with its public and private monuments (mosaics, sculptures, and column capitals).
All the major schools of painting were also represented: the Dutch and Flemish schools from the 15th to the 17th centuries, the Italian school from the 15th to the 17th centuries, the French school from the 16th to the 20th centuries. Among other masterpieces, the museum housed a famous panel by le Maître de Flémalle (circa 1435), the monumental canvas by Guerchin devoted to Saint Theresa of Avila (circa 1635), and also superb portraits by Pierre-Paul Rubens (circa 1615), by Jacques-Louis David and Jean-Dominique Ingres during the first part of the 19th century, not to mention works by Rembrandt, Jordaens, Le Nain, Géricault, Granet and Cézanne.
After four years of renovations, the new Granet Museum opened its doors in 2006 with the addition of one of the most significant treasures of recent years, the gift “From Cézanne to Giacometti”, comprising works of contemporary artists. Two architects contributed to this metamorphosis: Pierre Brotons for main construction and Jean-François Bodin for museographic details. With its exhibit area increased fourfold, the museum has gone from 1000 to 4000 m2 of surface area.
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