AG MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS

The Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Agen, located in the oldest part of the city, is already an architectural curiosity in itself, as it is composed of four private mansions dating from the 16th and 17th centuries, in which you can walk through time and art history. Among the twenty-six rooms of the museum are works by prestigious artists such as Goya, Tintoretto, Corot, Boudin, Sisley, Monet or Picabia, but also famous achievements such as the dishes of Palissy or the ceramic vases decorated by Rodin.

We go down to the basement to discover a small collection of minerals, but also prehistoric objects, vestiges of the daily life of the first Lot-et-Garonnais. We go back to Antiquity on the first floor with the collections of the Celtic and Gallo-Roman periods, the masterpiece of which is the Venus of Mas d'Agenais: discovered in 1876, it is dated to the 1st-2nd century A.D. We will also linger in the room where multiple objects from the Near East (Lebanon and Syria) are exhibited, covering the periods from the Bronze Age up to the Crusades. There is a large room to the left of the entrance with a rare circular fireplace from the Middle Ages. As you go upstairs and through the centuries, you will discover paintings, sculptures, furniture, earthenware and tapestries, all of which are colorful testimonies to the art of living from the 16th to the 20th century. Finally, we will not miss Le Choupatte and Le Minotaure by sculptor François-Xavier Lalanne (1927-2008), for the pleasure of the youngest and the oldest. In 2018, the museum invested in acquiring, under the noses of the Americans, the painting Nature morte à la mésange, aux souris, aux noix, aux insectes et au vase de jasmins, executed around 1712-1713 by the painter Jean-Baptiste Oudry (1686-1755). This early work is contemporary to two still lifes by the painter, seized in 1793 at the Château d'Aiguillon and presented today in the Museum's 18th century rooms. Considered one of the finest purchases made by French museums in 2017, the painting contributes to the Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Agen's reputation for its rich collection of 18th-century European works and the world's first collection of youthful works by the painter Oudry. The museum offers visitors touch-screen tablets so that they can freely appreciate the collections, according to the proposed thematic routes.