The Montmartre Museum is located in a beautiful old building that used to be called the "Rosimond Mansion." By the way, "de Rosimond" was the pseudonym of one of the actors in Molière's troupe, for whom this house was built. Later, equally creative people lived and worked there, such as the poet Pierre Reverdy, the pianist Erik Satie, and the artists Raoul Dufy and Auguste Renoir. The latter, incidentally, painted his famous work "The Swing" while sitting in the garden of this mansion.
But the acrobat Suzanne Valadon and her son, the artist Maurice Utrillo, lived in this house longer than anyone else. After an unfortunate fall in the circus, the woman was forced to earn extra money working as a nanny, a milliner, and an artist's model. She was portrayed on canvas by Renoir, Puvis de Chavannes, Van Gogh, Edgar Degas, and Toulouse-Lautrec. Their paintings are also displayed in this museum.
In addition to paintings, the collection includes theater posters, movie posters, old photographs, items from the life of the Parisian aristocracy of the 19th-20th centuries, and much more. In total, the museum has four exhibitions. Each of them reflects different stages in the history of this suburb, beginning in the 12th century, when not performers and artists but ordinary workers still lived here, mining gypsum in the mines.
In addition to the permanent exhibitions, the museum often hosts various exhibitions. If you happen to be here, be sure to stop by the library as well, where wonderful recordings of French chanson are kept.
