As part of the forthcoming reopening of the Goya Museum, the City of Castres is strengthening the already long-standing and numerous links it has with the Louvre Museum.
Privileged links between the Paintings department of the Louvre and the Goya museum
The Goya Museum is a unique Hispanic art museum in France, presenting creation in Spain from antiquity to the 21st century. It is the bequest of Pierre Briguiboul in 1894, son of a Castres painter and collector, to the City of Castres which determines the Hispanic vocation of the museum by bringing in three paintings by Goya.
In 1949, the first prestigious deposits from the Louvre Museum confirmed this Hispanic orientation. The portrait of Philip IV of Velázquez or even The Virgin and Child de Murillo become centerpieces of the museum itinerary.
Between 1980 and 1986, Jeannine Baticle, art historian and curator at the Louvre Museum, headed the Goya Museum.
In 2007, a first partnership was concluded for five years between the Louvre Museum and the City of Castres.
In 2013, three new deposits were granted to the Goya museum, including a significant work from El Greco’s studio, Saint Francis of Assisi and Brother Leo meditating on death.
Between July 2020 and April 2023, the Louvre Museum is supporting the ambitious renovation project of the museum, providing its expertise as a major heritage department in terms of restorations and the acquisition of paintings.
Today, around thirty works from the Louvre are deposited in Castres, the vast majority of them paintings, but also sculptures and furniture.
Strengthen existing collaborations
The signing of this new partnership agreement will make it possible to continue and strengthen the existing links with the Department of Paintings, particularly in terms of deposits, loans of works and expertise during acquisitions and restorations.
For the summer exhibition devoted to Goya and Picasso, the Louvre Museum granted a remarkable loan of a work by Goya, Still life with sheep’s head which will be presented for the first time in Castres. The curator of Spanish paintings, Charlotte Chastel-Rousseau will participate in the catalog of the exhibition and will give a conference in Castres.
A new dynamic to expand the fields of cooperation and develop new projects
New scientific collaborations are to come:
- A study and scientific mediation component
In a common desire to enrich the knowledge and dissemination of Spanish art, a Master class dedicated to the Spanish school of the Golden Age, organized with the Louvre and the University of Cergy-Pontoise, will be offered on the 6 and July 7, 2023 in Castres.
- Openness to new collections
New collaborations with the departments of Graphic Arts and Oriental Antiquities, around the archeology of the Iberians in particular, are planned in order to broaden the presentation of collections from the Iberian Peninsula.
- Goya 2028
Finally, a major traveling exhibition dedicated to Goya, on the occasion of the bicentenary of his death in Bordeaux in 2028, is currently under study, in conjunction with the Prado Museum.
