MUSÉE DES BEAUX ARTS, LYON

The Musée des Beaux Arts was once a convent called Palais Saint‑Pierre. It was converted into a museum in 1801. It sits on the most renowned square in Lyon: the Place des Terreaux, which boasts the Bartholdi fountain, a fountain sculpture installed in 1892 by the infamous sculptor who created Liberty Enlightening the World (the Statue of Liberty): Bartholdi. 

View of the Bartholdi fountain from the courtyard garden of the Musée des Beaux Arts

The museum houses a varied collection that goes beyond French art and ranges from Greek antiquity to contemporary art. Some of the paintings that stood out to me were Thomas Couture’s Femme nue, 1855; Henri Fantin-Latour’s La Lecture, 1877; El Greco’s The Disrobing of Christ, 1579; Willem Claesz Heda’s Still Life, 1642 and Jan Frans van Dael’s Vase of Flowers with a Broken Tuberose, 1807.

I also liked the contemporary sculpture installations by Claude Champy and Bernard Dejonghe.