Salla VartiainenDiscovering Montmartre – the Montmartre museum
We are climbing up the hill to Montmartre in Paris. Montmartre is an area in Paris’s 18 arrondissement, famous for all the artists that used to live and work here during the Belle Époque 100+ years ago.
Monet, Renoir, Degas, Pissarro and Toulouse-Lautrec were just a few of the artists that had studios here. And it was a good place to have a studio back then. Paris was cheap and Montmartre was filled with affordable bars and cabarets, which suited the struggling artists wallets.
Painters were not the only ones flocking here. Other creatives like writers, poets and musicians were also drawn to this place, so it was really bustling with creative energy.
Today Montmartres energy is more of a curious kind. Instead of creatives searching for the right angle, the hill is now filled with tourists from all around the world.
The higher up we come, the more tourists we see. We stop and admire the winding roads with their cute houses and cobble stone streets, join the other tourists in the pursuit of taking photos and slowly find our way to our destination.
Museum Montmartre and its collections
The Montmartre museum was founded in 1960 to display the collection of Le Viux Montmartre, a foundation established in 1886 that collects material like art, writings and photographs linked to the history of Montmartre. Among the collections 6000 art related items you find interesting depictions and descriptions of the artists lifes and of a past time Montmartre, where windmills are spinning in the rural scenario and cabarets offer entertainment for the curious and dearing.
The museum is housed in the former home and studio of artists Renoir, Valadon and Utrillo. They all used to work and live here and the house with its cute little garden has been immortalized in their paintings many times.
Painting of the house by artist André Utter
In addition to the permanent collection, the museum also hosts temporary exhibitions, and a fullsize replica of Suzanne Valadons studio!
The exhibition
The permanent exhibition is divided into 3 floors. On the first floor we find paintings with motifs of Montmartres historical events, like a painting of the building of the famous Basilika Sacre-Coeur by artist Alphonse Quizet.
On the second floor the famous Chat Noir (black cat) is staring at us from above the door. This floor is entirely dedicated to the cabaret and especially to Chat Noir. It tells the history of the cabaret and display beautifuly hand painted posters.
On the third floor we find paintings of and by Suzanne Valadon. Valadon was something as unusual as a model turned artist! She started working as a nude model to get money to support her son and mother and eventually became interested in painting her self!
There is also a temporary exhibition going on, but that one is so crowded that we decided to skip it.
Suzanne Valadons art studio
In another building we find the replika of Suzanne Valadons studio. It´s a smallish room with big big windows, and it has amazing light! An easel stands in the middle of the room with an ongoing canvas, like the painter just briefly left the room to go get something.
I think it´s nice that they recreated Valadons studio and not Renoirs! Women were systematically excluded from the artworld for so long so it´s time they get some recognizion.
Conclusion
The entrance fee to the museum is 15 euros (year 2025) for adults and 8 euros for children and there is also a small cafe here named after Renoir where you can buy drinks to enjoy in the garden.
It is a touristy but cute place, and it´s always fun to see what the artist before us experienced, saw and painted.
After the museum we continued climbing up the hill to Basilica Sacre Coeur where we encountered crazy amounts of tourists!
xoxo/Salla V