Musée de la Vie romantique

In July 1830, weeks before the revolution that put his patrons the Orléans on the throne, the painter Ary Scheffer moved his family into a newly built house at the back of a plot on the rue Chaptal. The quarter was new too: former orchards on the slope below Montmartre, filling with artists and actors, soon to be nicknamed the Nouvelle Athènes. Scheffer, Dutch-born and a drawing master to the children of the Duke of Orléans, was a tenant at first. He added two studios facing north under glass roofs, for the steady light painters need.

From 1831 until his death in 1858 the larger studio became, on Friday evenings, one of the meeting places of Romantic Paris. Delacroix came, and George Sand and Chopin, Liszt, and Tocqueville, among many others. Scheffer painted his friends and the great literary subjects of the day, Faust’s Marguerite and Dante’s Francesca, in a sentimental, finely drawn manner that made him one of the most admired painters of his time and has since cost him much of his reputation.

The house stayed in the family. Ernest Renan married Scheffer’s niece Cornélie, and the property passed down through her line to Renan’s descendants. In 1956 two of them handed the enclosure to the French State for a symbolic franc; it was listed as a historic monument the same year. A museum named after Renan and Scheffer opened in 1983, and in 1987 it took its present name. The City of Paris has owned the house since 2007.

Today the ground floor recalls Sand through objects from her house at Nohant, bequeathed by her granddaughter Aurore Lauth-Sand: furniture, jewels, portraits, and the plaster casts that her son-in-law, the sculptor Auguste Clésinger, took of Chopin’s left hand and of Sand’s own forearm. Scheffer’s paintings fill the rooms above and the studio across the courtyard. After a renovation of roofs, glass and façades, the museum reopened in February 2026; the greenhouse and rose garden in front of it are as much a reason to come as the collections.

What to look for

• The cobbled, tree-lined lane from the rue Chaptal, which hides the house from the street.
• The two north-lit studios across the courtyard, built for Scheffer after 1830.
• Clésinger’s casts of Chopin’s left hand and Sand’s arm.
• Sand’s jewellery and the souvenirs from Nohant on the ground floor.
• Scheffer’s portrait of the singer Pauline Viardot (1840).

Timeline

1. 1830Ary Scheffer moves into the new house as a tenant
2. 1831Start of the Friday evenings in the studio, until 1858
3. 1858Death of Ary Scheffer
4. 1956The family hands the property to the State; listed as a historic monument
5. 1983Opening of the Musée Renan-Scheffer (uncertain date)
6. 1987Renamed Musée de la Vie romantique
7. 2026Reopens in February after renovation

Works to see here

Art →

Plaques within 250 m

• 11b Rue Chaptal · 40 m

  Serge Gainsbourg / (1928 - 1991) / Artiste majeur du XXe siècle / passa son enfance / dans cet immeuble / et trouva dans ce quartier / ses premières inspirations

• 19 Rue Pierre Fontaine · 60 m

  TOULOUSE-LAUTREC / PEIGNIT ICI / DE 1887 A 1893

• 9 Rue Chaptal · 60 m

  IANNIS XENAKIS / 1922 - 2001 / NÉ GREC / RÉSISTANT, RÉFUGIÉ POLITIQUE / COMPOSITEUR / A VÉCU DANS CETTE MAISON DÈS 1970 / IL Y EST MORT LE 4 FÉVRIER 2001 / IL COMPOSAIT, ÉCRIVAIT, TRAVAILLAIT / DEPUIS 1960 DANS SON STUDIO / 17 RUE VICTOR MASSÉ, PARIS 9ème

• 3 Rue Chaptal · 100 m

  ICI VECURENT / LE PEINTRE VICTOR TARDIEU / 1870-1937 / ET SON FILS LE POETE / JEAN TARDIEU / 1903-1995

• 1 Rue Pierre Fontaine · 110 m

  SULPICE GUILLAUME CHEVALIER / DIT / GAVARNI / PEINTRE ET ILLUSTRATEUR / A VÉCU DANS CETTE MAISON / DE / 1837 À 1846

• 34 Rue Duperre · 120 m

  Dans cette maison / Georges BIZET / a vécu de 1869 / à sa mort en 1875 / à BOUGIVAL

• 2 Rue Pierre Fontaine · 130 m

  BENJAMIN GODARD / COMPOSITEUR DE MUSIQUE / LAURÉAT DE LA VILLE DE PARIS EN 1878 / A VÉCU DANS CETTE MAISON / 1849-1895 / MAI 1920 VILLE DE PARIS

• 62 Rue Blanche · 140 m

  DANS CETTE MAISON / VÉCUT ET TRAVAILLA / LE PEINTRE FRANCIS SMITH / NÉ AU PORTUGAL EN 1881 / MORT À PARIS EN 1961

Commemorative plaques, Ville de Paris open data (ODbL); transcriptions as published, in French. 28 in all within this radius.

Sources

• Ville de Paris: 1 lieu, 3 histoires, le musée de la Vie romantique
• Ministère de la Culture, POP (Mérimée): Hôtel Renan-Scheffer, PA00088936
• Paris je t’aime: Musée de la Vie romantique
• Atlas Obscura: Chopin’s immortal hands
• Wikipédia: Musée de la Vie romantique
• Wikidata Q2714932 (coordinates, CC0)