Musée d'Art naïf et d'Arts singuliers, Art museum in Château de Laval, France.
The Museum of Naive Art and Singular Arts is housed in Château de Laval, a medieval fortress in northwestern France. The collection displays works by self-taught and independent artists, emphasizing personal creative expression and artistic styles outside traditional training.
In 1965 the Laval naive artist Jules Lefranc offered his collection to the city on condition that a museum be created for it; the deed of 25 May 1966 listed 17 of his works and 15 paintings from his own collection. The museum opened on 20 June 1967 in the ground floor of the medieval Château de Laval as the Musée Henri Rousseau, the first French museum devoted to naive art, with Jean-Pierre Bouvet as first director and Andrée Bordeaux Le Pecq as a driving force. It later became the Musée du Vieux-Château, and from 1973 it took in marginal and singular art, hence its present name.
The museum's name comes from its 1967 founding as the Musée Henri Rousseau, after the painter born in Laval in 1844. Its five naive-art sections include the "primitifs modernes" — Rousseau, Séraphine de Senlis, André Bauchant, Camille Bombois and Louis Vivin — a room on the Hlebine School founded in the 1930s by Ivan Generalić, Franjo Mraz and Mirko Virius, and the Lefranc donation of 15 paintings and two gouaches by Lefranc plus 15 works from his collection.
The museum is housed within a medieval castle with multiple levels, so comfortable shoes and time to explore are recommended. Visitors should check whether opening hours differ during holidays or specific seasons.
Three oil paintings by Henri Rousseau are kept here, including "La moisson au chateau" (1885) and "Le Pont de Grenelle" (1922); Rousseau was born in Laval in 1844. In 2017 an anonymous visitor gave the museum "Paysage avec pêcheur", accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Dora Vallier, a specialist in Rousseau.
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