This splendid house museum predates the Marmottan (previous page) by a couple generations and gives one an idea of what I imagine Proust might have encountered. The house and its furnishings are as I once heard someone say, “the best of their kind.” On the walls are Dutch masters, including Rembrandt, Fragonard, Boucher, the Italian Renaissance. The main staircase wins for the most elegant (double staircase) I have seen — the back stairs are elegant, also. There is a two story music room — musicians were on the second floor gallery. The house is peculiar in that the carriage way from Boulevard Haussmann passes under the house and up to a courtyard on the back side of the house. An exhibition of the works of Artemesia Gentileschi, including one painting on loan from the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, was in the temporary galleries.
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