Visages d'artistes - De Gustave Courbet à Annette Messager

From 18 March 2026 at 9:00 AM, following the 2023–2024 exhibition “Treasures in Black and White: Dürer, Rembrandt, Goya, Toulouse‑Lautrec,” the Petit Palais revisits one of the themes of its collections: the portrait and the artist’s self‑portrait.

By presenting a wide selection of 19th‑century works that bring together paintings, sculptures, graphic arts, photographs and decorative arts, the museum offers a fresh perspective on some of its well‑known masterpieces and invites visitors to rediscover works that are rarely exhibited. The exhibition examines the function of the artist’s portrait — an exercise in admiration and friendship, a reflection of artistic lineage, or, conversely, a vehicle for ironic critique.

“Studio portraits,” staged, furnished interiors, present the crucible of creation and reveal new forms of sociability. The exhibition is also an opportunity to read, by implication, the history of the museum’s collections, assembled thanks to the support of artists and their families, who donated numerous likenesses of their relatives.

In counterpoint, the Petit Palais presents around ten women artists currently working in Paris who probe the genre of the portrait, positioned between tradition and modernity. In dialogue with the collections, their works either echo them or stand apart by virtue of their singularity. From different generations, these women have helped reshape the imagination associated with the artist’s portrait by drawing on the otherness of their experiences. At once a search for the self and an aesthetic manifesto, their portraits make room for a new assertion of the artist: “I am my work.” Through painting, sculpture and photography, the artist’s portrait sheds light on contemporary issues concerning gender identity and feminist struggles.