Fifteen works donated to the Musée des Beaux-Arts d’Orléans

20/4/26 - Acquisitions - Orléans, Musée des Beaux-Arts - We have said it on several occasions: active museums (exhibitions, acquisitions, publications, etc.) attract donations. This is how the Musée des Beaux-Arts d’Orléans has just received several works donated by Françoise Heilbrun, art historian and former curator at the Musée d’Orsay, where she founded the photography department at its opening in 1986.

These are not photographs here, but drawings, paintings, and a sculpture. Two of the sheets, by Eugène Delacroix, constitute an immediate gift, while the remaining works are donated subject to usufruct.

It is well known that, like most of his colleagues, Delacroix copied old masters extensively. Rubens, who strongly influenced his art, is among those he studied most. The two sheets (ill. 1 and 2) given to the museum were made after paintings preserved in Germany (The Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence, in Munich, and The Assumption of the Virgin in Düsseldorf), but after engravings, with an inverted composition for The Assumption of the Virgin, and in the same direction for Saint Lawrence.

Let us remain within the Romantic movement, one of the strengths of the Musée des Beaux-Arts d’Orléans, with several works.
The first painting is by Louis Boulanger (ill. 3), to whom…