While on visit as a guest of the Marmottan Museum, Gerard Fromanger stopped in front of a painting by Caillebote, Paris Street, a rainy day. In 1877, the impressionist had depicted two strollers in haussman’s Paris. They were at the intersection of the rue de Turin and the rue de Moscou and it comes as no surprise that Fromanger — widely known as a painter of the street –was struck by a work of art that celebrated his own favorite subject. The irresistible desire to paint “with four hands”, side by side with Caillebotte, to return to a subject that fascinated both of them was manifest. Fromanger made a proposition to the Museum, a proposition that innocently answered a project in gestation at rue Louis Boilly for a long time, to open the museum to the art of its own time.
The Marmatton is not just a museum, it is also a home, appropriated by collectors and descendants of the artists since it went public in 1934. It was home to Jules and Paul Marmatton who founded the institution and also home to Victorine Donop de Monchy who in 1940 gave the Marmatton Impression, soleil levant and ten other signed works by Monet, Renoir, Pissaro, Morisot and Guillaumin. The Monet and Morisot families also made the Marmatton their home, home to the first world-wide collections of these two impresionists. These benefactors were not simply satisfied to offer works of art, they also delegated collections of personal writings, diaries and family portraits. It seems natural therefore that today’s painters be able to open the doors of the institution, feel themselves at home and find their own place, a place passed from painter to painter as part of a cultural inheritance.
In this context, the Marmatton has decided to extend invitations to artists twice a year, asking them to do works that resonate with the museum’s permanent collections. This open invitation to an “unexpected dialogue” was scheduled to be initiated by Fromanger in 2017. With hindsight, we can see that the ensuing waiting period established the premises of such an encounter. At the end of 2017, while the context of the dialogues remained confidential, Fromanger completed a series of sixteen drawn portraits of yesterday’s and today’s painters, from Giotto to Bruce Naumann. With such hommage (a Fromanger habit since the 70’s) Fromanger drew together a community of artists that he called his circle of “Friends”, (Amis) the title which he gave to the collection. Caillebotte and Pissarro are not yet included (they will soon be). Monet, however is already part of the group.
