Villa-Musée Jean-Honoré Fragonard

Villa-Musée Jean-Honoré Fragonard stands in Grasse, in a Provençal villa built beyond the old city walls during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Terraced gardens and former vegetable plots surround the architecture.

Several Provençal families lived here before Alexandre Maubert, a Grasse perfumery merchant and Fragonard relative, acquired the house. Jean-Honoré Fragonard stayed here in 1790. During that visit, he decorated the grand staircase with a trompe-l’œil mural filled with classical, Masonic and revolutionary references. The grand salon once held fourteen canvases, including four commissioned for Madame du Barry at Louveciennes. Auguste de la Brély copied the paintings before the originals left in 1898.

Today, the first-floor rooms bring together works by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Alexandre-Évariste Fragonard and Marguerite Gérard. Paintings include Paysage. Les Laveuses, Le Troupeau, Le Serment d'amour and L'Oiseau chéri. A bust by Gustave Deloye, Fragonard’s chair and his paint box add personal traces. The staircase gained historical-monument protection in 1957, while the house and garden followed in 1989.