The palace of the archbishops of Cambrai was rebuilt in the 17th century, occupied by Fénelon, transformed by Brongniart, then sacked during the Revolution. Since 1982, the Palais Fénelon has hosted the Henri Matisse museum. Twice expanded and modernized, the museum now takes over the old covered market.
Before experiencing the textile crisis that hit the region in the 20th century, Cateau-Cambrésis was a prosperous city whose origins date back to the year 1000. When Matisse was born there, the town has nearly 9,500 inhabitants and numerous businesses, including more than 20 fabric merchants and milliners and around fifteen tanners and saddlers. Matisse comes from a family of weavers on his father’s side and tanners on his mother’s side. Thus, it is to these professions of milliners, tailors, seamstresses, weavers, tanners that Henri Matisse’s ancestors belong.
Matisse, child of the industrial revolution
He was born on December 31, 1869, at the home of his maternal grandparents, the Gérards, who had lived in Le Cateau since the 17th century. But his parents, Émile Hippolyte Matisse and Anna Héloïse Gérard, had other ambitions: to open a seed and hardware store in Bohain, a town located about fifteen kilometers away, where Matisse grew up. The business founded by his parents prospered quickly, but Matisse frequently returned to Le Cateau to his maternal family to whom he remained very attached.
The 19th century corresponds to the industrialization of weaving, and Auguste Seydoux and his brother Charles, Protestants originally from Switzerland, arriving in Le Cateau in 1824, quickly founded their empire there with a weaving town with 400 mechanized looms. Bohain, a town with 6,500 inhabitants in 1879, is specialized in the manufacture of luxury textiles: velvet, silk, cashmere, brocades, tulle and taffeta.
Fénelon’s shadow
But Cambrésis has a much older history, as evidenced by the Palais Fénelon, where the Matisse collection moved from the town hall in 1982. Former residence of the archbishops of Cambrai, the private mansion, built at the end of the 17th century, was transformed by the architect Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart (1739-1813), passed down to posterity thanks to the former Palais de la Bourse, in Paris. The regular order of its facade punctuated by large windows is soberly crowned by a triangular pediment, the combination of bricks and stones constituting the only ornament. The building became the residence of Fénelon (1651-1715), an illustrious man of letters and tutor to the Duke of Burgundy (grandson of Louis XIV), when he was named archbishop of Cambrai in 1695.
A redesigned museum space
Built into barracks for the Austrian army during the French Revolution, it housed a cotton mill in 1806, before becoming a school at the end of the 19th century then a museum in 1982: the current Matisse museum. Its monumental portal with blue stone columns now marks the main entrance to the museum while at the rear, the French-style park planted with century-old lime trees constitutes a green space popular with the Catesians. Bordering the main courtyard on the right of the palace, the former girls’ school, a pretty 19th century brick building, was integrated into the museum in an expansion project which saw the light of day when, in 1992, the museum municipal is ceded to the department. Led by the architectural firm Emmanuelle and Laurent Beaudouin, the work, which took place between 1999 and 2002, consisted of the construction of an east wing to connect the two buildings and redeploy the museum. Bordering the main courtyard to the west this time, the city’s covered market dating from the 19th century was purchased in 2012 by the Department of the North with the idea of expanding the museum again.
The work which started in 2019 was entrusted to the Bernard Desmoulin firm. Presenting 3 platforms totaling 1,000 m2, the former covered market welcomes the Matisse collections in a completely redesigned display, while the public reception areas have been completely redesigned. In particular, there is a separate reception area and dedicated rooms for school groups, particularly numerous of whom visit the museum as part of the missions of the Department of the North.
3 questions for architect Bernard Desmoulin
What were your missions as part of this new project at the Henri Matisse departmental museum?
Our main mission was to connect the Fénelon palace to the old covered market. We did not intervene at all on the east wing where the architectural firm Emmanuelle and Laurent Beaudouin had very elegantly worked on the integration of the former girls’ school, in 2002, and where the spaces of temporary exhibition and the Auguste Herbin collection. The old covered market looked like a large empty shell where we created three platforms of 300 m2 each by digging the basement and raising the building.
How did you think about the journey of the permanent collections?
The new route is mainly located in the old covered market and the Fénelon palace. We have worked on fluidity so well that the passage from one building to another is imperceptible. The last level, with its high ceilings and movable partitions, also allows great flexibility.
What are the main contributions of this renovation?
The obvious contribution is the significant increase in permanent exhibition space and the comfort provided by the separate reception of groups who now benefit from four educational workshop rooms. This new stage in the life of the establishment will certainly help to shine the spotlight on an important museum.
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