Gustave Fayet, Collectionneur - Créateur. Icônes de l'art moderne

In the tradition of the 'Icons of Modern Art' exhibitions devoted to great collectors such as Sergueï Chtchoukine, the Morozov brothers Mikhaïl Morozov and Ivan Morozov, and Samuel Courtauld, the Fondation Louis Vuitton continues its exploration of pioneering figures who contributed to the history of modern art with an exceptional exhibition: 'Gustave Fayet. Collector – Creator', on view from 9 October 2026 to 8 March 2027.

This major project occupies all the Fondation Louis Vuitton spaces and unfolds in two parts — Gustave Fayet, the collector, and Gustave Fayet, the creator — revealing the singularity of a passion in which collecting, creation and artistic engagement resonate with one another. The exhibition thus sketches the portrait of an essential actor of modernity at the turn of the century and, today, unjustly forgotten.

The exhibition is an unprecedented event. On the one hand, for the first time in a century, it brings together more than 250 works from an extraordinary collection, now dispersed around the world, and, on the other hand, 375 works by Gustave Fayet, most of which have never been shown to the public and have been restored for the occasion.

Resulting from years of research, the exhibition benefits from the support of 64 international institutions and 71 private collections. This unprecedented event reveals the prominence of Gustave Fayet (1865-1925), a passionate collector, an artist but also a prolific creator and an indefatigable entrepreneur in the field of decorative arts. Behind this little-known name lies indeed one of the great champions of the avant-garde of his time, a man who actively contributed to the emergence of modern art in all its forms.

Gustave Fayet was among the first to collect Van Gogh, to exhibit Picasso, or to assemble at his Parisian home a 'Gauguin Museum', rich with nearly 200 works, where the artists and collectors of the era gathered. A friend and ardent admirer of Redon, he gave him the opportunity to realize a grand decor, long kept secret, in his Fontfroide Abbey in the Midi region of France.

Gustave Fayet was not only an exceptional collector who gathered more than 750 major works of modern art (excluding prints). In the second part of his life he was also a creator whose success left a mark on the decorative arts at the beginning of the 20th century.

Painter, watercolourist, ceramicist, decorator, creator of carpets, fabrics and wallpapers, illustrator of books, he embodies a generation for whom art nourishes every aspect of life. His creations, distributed through the most prestigious galleries and important salons of his era, attracted figures as influential as Paul Poiret, Jacques Doucet, or Jeanne Lanvin. From Art Nouveau to Art Deco, Fayet fully participated in the invention of a new art of living where the fine arts and decorative arts fuse. For Gustave Fayet, collecting and creating unite in a single impulse.

This first international-scale exhibition devoted to this pioneering figure in many respects reveals a thriving universe and opens a new chapter in modern art and decorative arts of the early 20th century. The ambitious project gathers in total 728 works and documents distributed between the two sections of the exhibition.

The exhibition highlights a group of 10 paintings by Vincent van Gogh, 78 works by Paul Gauguin, 86 works by Odilon Redon, as well as paintings and pastels by Edgar Degas, Paul Cézanne, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Paul Signac, Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard and Henri Matisse.

Examples of works presented for the first time in France:

Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe by Vincent van Gogh.

One of the exhibition’s landmark moments is the presentation of the 'Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe' by Vincent van Gogh, which has not been shown in France since 1937 and has never been lent for an exhibition since 1990. Painted after the dramatic rupture between Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh, this moving painting portrays a wounded artist, yet resolved to continue painting. The 'Self-Portrait with Gauguin’s Palette' will echo it: two radical visions of the modern artist thus respond to each other in an unprecedented dialogue.

The Yellow Christ, Portrait of the Artist with the Yellow Christ and The Breton Calvary: three masterworks by Gauguin

The exhibition brings together The Yellow Christ (1889, Buffalo AKG Art Museum), Portrait of the Artist with the Yellow Christ (1890-1891, Musée d’Orsay, Paris) and The Breton Calvary (1889, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels), which belonged to Gustave Fayet and to his close associates George Daniel de Monfreid and Maurice Fabre. Three paintings, three collectors from the Midi in the south of France, united and complicit in their passion for Gauguin, three modes of self-portrait form a unique constellation bearing witness to the decisive role Fayet played in the artist’s recognition. This is the first time that these three works have been brought together in France.

Le Jour, La Nuit and Le Silence: an extraordinary décor by Odilon Redon

Another major moment in the journey is the presentation of the décor Redon painted for the library of the Fontfroide Abbey, a Cistercian abbey, which Fayet bought in 1908 to restore and transform into a 'total work of art'. The panels remain carefully preserved there. For the first time, Le Jour, La Nuit and Le Silence, Redon’s true artistic testaments, are revealed to the public. For Fayet, the work and the friendship of the Symbolist painter open the way to an art that is suggestive and spiritual, nourishing his own creation.

A rich ensemble of creations brought together for the first time: 49 ceramics, 17 mises en carte (layout studies), 87 watercolors on blotting paper, 15 paintings, pastels and gouaches, and 10 illustrated books, including the 42 plates he drew after Mireille, Frédéric Mistral’s Provençal poem, and his testament album, Fleurs.

Gustave Fayet’s first artistic venture: ceramics and the collaboration with Louis Paul

In 1896, Gustave Fayet launched his first venture in decorative arts. With the painter and sculptor Louis Paul (1858-1922), a former student of Rodin, he founded at Béziers a stoneware workshop that produced well over a hundred ceramics until 1904. Their entrepreneurial spirit was quickly rewarded: in June 1898, Fayet presented some stoneware trials to Siegfried Bing, which captivated the Parisian gallery-owner at the forefront of decorative research.

From the 'spot' to the 'gardens of fantasy': watercolors on blotting paper

Around 1912, after nearly ten years of interruption, Gustave Fayet resumes the brush: the artist has undergone a profound transformation. The controlled world of his early Languedoc landscapes is replaced by strange forms, emerging in a floating and indeterminate world at the boundaries of abstraction. "A beautiful blot can be the starting point of a beautiful drawing," he notes, exploiting the chances of the encounter between watercolor and blotting paper to give rise, in the very material, to a profusion of flowers. These works soon become his visual signature, which he would later develop into wallpapers, fabrics and carpets.

More geometric lines, more symmetry… but more whimsy: carpets drawn for the Atelier de la Dauphine

In 1920, Gustave Fayet founded in Paris the Atelier de la Dauphine, intended to transform into carpets the 'thousands of documents, drawings, watercolors' accumulated since his first blotters in 1912. His carpets met immediate success with enthusiasts — Jeanne Lanvin, Jacques Doucet, Léon Losseau, the Kapferer brothers, Robert de Rothschild, and even the Maharajah of Indore. This production was part of a project to renew the décor, opposing traditional geometric motifs with freely inspired botanical and aquatic forms: 'More geometric lines, more symmetry, more bouquets of flowers repeated... but with whimsy. We will never put enough whimsy in our works.' Each carpet reads like a painting.

Major restorations: carpets, preparatory drawings, dresses

On the occasion of the exhibition, significant restoration campaigns were undertaken by the Fondation Louis Vuitton, including the carpets made for Maison Léon Losseau in Mons (Belgium), a masterpiece of Art Nouveau, as well as a set of preparatory mises en cartes, revealing a remarkable body of work. About ten dresses illustrating his connections with Paul Poiret, Jacques Doucet, and Jeanne Lanvin have been identified and restored.

With the exhibition 'Gustave Fayet, Collector – Creator', the Fondation Louis Vuitton reveals a forgotten continent in the history of modern art and decorative arts: the fascinating universe of a man whose life seems to have been guided by the words of his friend André Suarès: 'He did everything with art.'

Commissariat, scenography, publications and associated programming

Sylvie Patry, General Heritage Curator and internationally renowned specialist in late 19th- and early 20th-century art, is the General Commissioner of the exhibition and directs the catalog on Gustave Fayet’s collection.

Angeline Scherf, Associate Curator, Fondation Louis Vuitton, oversees the curatorship of the creator’s section as well as the direction of his catalog.

The Fondation Louis Vuitton invited Robert Carsen to conceive a sensitive and immersive scenography, reviving the multiple worlds of Gustave Fayet. Through the play of atmospheres, colors and the architecture of the spaces, he reimagines his universes — his houses, his places of life, his collections and his creations. The parcours unfolds as a sequence of distinct segments, offering a reading of Fayet’s different facets — collector, patron, creator, entrepreneur — while preserving the intimate coherence of his gaze. Each ensemble favors evocation over reconstruction, and restores the richness and diversity of his universe.

Two books, co-published with Gallimard, explore the multiple facets of the collector and the creator, while a publicly accessible database will catalogue the roughly 740 works and the hundred prints identified to date from Gustave Fayet’s collection, testifying to its breadth and variety. An international symposium will extend this ambitious research project. The exhibition will also be accompanied by a documentary, 'A Life for Art. Gustave Fayet, Artist and Collector of Modernity', co-produced by ARTE France, Eddy Story, the Fondation Louis Vuitton and MAGFF.

Commissariat

Sylvie Patry, Guest General Commissioner, General Curator at the Musée d’Orsay, with the collaboration of Yulia Kokurkina, Exhibition Assistant, and Michèle Kieffer, Research and Scientific Coordination Officer

Angeline Scherf, Associate Commissioner, Fondation Louis Vuitton, with the collaboration of Cordélia de Brosses, Mission Officer, and Charlotte Lange, Exhibition Assistant

Scenography
Robert Carsen, Artistic Director of the exhibition, assisted by Luis Carvalho

The exhibition was produced in collaboration with the Association Musée d’Art Gustave Fayet Fontfroide

With the exceptional support of the Musée d’Orsay
With the exceptional collaboration of the Bibliothèque nationale de France