Antoine Bourdelle was Rodin's most important pupil, and eventually surpassed his teacher in the view of many critics. He worked in the same studio in Montparnasse for forty-five years, from 1885 until his death in 1929. The Musée Bourdelle preserves that studio, the adjacent foundry, and the gardens, converting the working space of the artist into one of the most intimate museum experiences in Paris.
The collection is large and diverse: monumental bronzes, intimate plaster studies, drawings, and the decorative works Bourdelle produced for the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. The permanent collection is free, and the museum is consistently one of the least crowded in the city.
What you will see
The studio and the foundry. Bourdelle's working spaces are preserved as he left them, with the tools, the moulds and the pieces still unfinished, and they explain more about how a sculptor actually worked than any label could. Around them are the studies for Héraclès archer, reworked more than twenty times before he was satisfied, and the reliefs he made for the facade of the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, a commission that pulled sculpture into modern architecture.
The portraits. Bourdelle returned to Beethoven for some thirty years, a face he never stopped rethinking, and the results are shown here in series rather than as a single finished statement. Alongside them stand the portraits of the people around him, Rodin among them, which is where the debt to his teacher and the distance he travelled from him are both easiest to see.
The preserved studio · the Héraclès studies · the Beethoven portraits
Pépin's advice
Free entry is not the point. The Musée Bourdelle is free, which is one reason it is less visited than it should be. The collection is major. The setting is extraordinary. Neither fact is connected to the price.
Combine with Montparnasse. The museum is in Montparnasse, close to the Cimetière du Montparnasse and the cafés of the boulevard. A morning in the museum and an afternoon in the neighbourhood is a coherent combination.
Pair it with Rodin. Bourdelle trained under Rodin, and the two museums read as one argument when seen in the same day. We can build the day around either order.
Good to know
The museum closes on Mondays. The entrance is on the rue Antoine Bourdelle, two minutes from Falguière on line 12 or Gaîté on line 13, and we meet at the door. Works are regularly moved for restoration, loan or study, so if a piece described here is away on the day, our guide will reshape the visit around what is on show.
