Musée Bonnat-Helleu

The Musée Bonnat-Helleu is a fine arts museum in Bayonne, in south-western France, holding around 7,000 pieces, mainly paintings and works on paper. Its international reputation rests largely on its drawings collection, which, together with that of the Louvre in Paris, is the only one in France to include original sketches by Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael. The museum opened in 1901 as the Musée Bonnat, named after the painter and collector Léon Bonnat, a native of the town. In 2011 it took the name Bonnat-Helleu, in recognition of a major gift of works by the painter Paul César Helleu. The eclectic, palace-like building was designed by Charles Planckaert after a fire damaged the town hall in 1889. After a long extension, it reopened in November 2025 with twice the exhibition space.

The painting collection includes Italian masters such as Filippo Lippi and Beccafumi, along with a notable group of Spanish works: El Greco, José de Ribera and Goya, of whom the museum has three pieces, including a Self-portrait and the Duke of Osuna. Bonnat spent his teenage years in Madrid and studied the Prado, an experience that shaped both his style and his tastes as a collector. Among the French works, Ingres stands out with his well-known Bather seen from behind, alongside Géricault, Degas and Puvis de Chavannes. The drawings collection, with about 2,000 sheets, is the second largest of its kind in France, with examples by Dürer, Botticelli and Rembrandt. Because the original bequest carries a ban on lending, its founding works cannot be loaned, although later acquisitions are free of this rule.