The Musée Marmottan (daily 10am–6pm; €6.50; www.marmottan.com; M° Muette), 2 rue Louis-Boilly, is best known for its excellent collection of Monet paintings, bequeathed to the museum by the artist's son. Among them is Impression, soleil levant, a canvas from 1872 of a misty Le Havre morning, and whose title the critics usurped to give the Impressionist movement its name. The painting was stolen from the gallery in October 1985, along with eight other paintings. After a police operation lasting five years, which extended as far afield as Japan, the paintings were discovered in a villa in southern Corsica – they're back on show with greatly tightened security. There's also a dazzling selection of works from Monet's last years at Giverny; these paintings show the increasingly abstract quality of the artist's later work and include several Nymphéas (Waterlilies), Le Pont Japonais, L'Allée des Rosiers and La Saule Pleureur, where rich colours are laid on in thick, excited whorls and lines. The collection also features some of Monet's contemporaries – Manet, Renoir and Berthe Morisot. The last is particularly well represented, with two rooms devoted to her wonderfully delicate, summery canvases.In addition, the museum displays some splendid examples of First Empire pomposity: chairs with golden sphinxes for armrests, candelabra of complicated headdresses and twining serpents, and a small and beautiful collection of thirteenth- to sixteenth-century manuscript illuminations – look out for the decorated capital R framing an exquisitely drawn portrait of Saint Catherine of Alexandria.
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