News from the Château de Compiègne (1): the catalogue of paintings on line

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15/12/23 - Internet - Compiègne, Château - We haven’t written much about the Château de Compiègne since Rodolphe Rapetti took over the helm [1] (see the news item of 17/1/18). We had a distorted view of his work because of the two exhibitions devoted to cars. Not that the château is illegitimate for this type of event: the Musée de la Voiture, which it houses within its walls, justifies them. But the subject, which largely concerns the 20th century, was partly outside our scope. We were therefore unaware of the work that has been carried out over the last few years, which shows that far from being concerned only with motor vehicles, it has in fact covered the whole of the château and its collections.
An in-depth visit very quickly convinced us of this, and it is therefore only right that we should devote a number of news items of this successful policy to help us catch up. These will cover restorations, acquisitions, works taken out of storage, exhibitions and even the reopening of a museum. We’ll start here with the online publication of the catalogue raisonné of the painting collections, a particularly valuable tool.

While we will always prefer (which may seem paradoxical for an online-only magazine) museum catalogues published on paper, we must nonetheless welcome such an initiative for a château-museum rich in sometimes little-known works. No fewer than 652 paintings are listed here, accompanied by three essays, numerous comparative photographs and appendices (bibliography and detailed indexing). So this is much more than a simple database. The authors are Jacques Kuhnmunch, Laure Chabanne and Étienne Guibert.

1. Gerrit Berckheyde (1638-1698)
The Vegetable Merchant
Oil on panel - 47 x 63 cm
Compiègne, château
Photo: RMN-GP

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In his preface, Rodolphe Rapetti recalls the origins of this collection: those relating to the two museums devoted to the Second Empire, the one…