Proust and the arts

The museum is presenting an exhibition on the importance of art in the work of one of the most influential writers of the 20th century, Marcel Proust (Auteuil, 1871 - Paris, 1922), recognised both in literature and in philosophy and art theory. The aesthetic ideas that Proust developed in his work, the artistic, architectural and landscape settings that surrounded him and which he recreated in his books, as well as the contemporary and earlier artists who served to stimulate him are among the aspects that articulate the structure of this exhibition, which aims to highlight this connection and the interrelation between art and his life and work.

To understand Proust it is important to know the Paris in which he lived; the cosmopolitan and rich capital of the Third Republic, its great transformation following Baron Hausmann’s urban reforms, with the introduction of electricity, cars, public spectacles, restaurants and cafés. Proust was fascinated not only by the arts but also by the modernity that was flourishing to such a marked degree at the end of the 19th century. The image of the modern created by the Impressionist painters through their depictions of Paris’s streets and other locations lies at the heart of the Proustian aesthetic and all of this would influence his life and also his writing.

In addition to paintings by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Van Dyck, Watteau, Turner, Fantin Latour, Manet, Monet, Renoir and Whistler, among others, a sculpture by Antoine Bourdelle and the above-mentioned designs by Fortuny and other couturiers of the time, the exhibition includes a selection of books by Proust from the Bibliothèque nationale de France and Biblioteca del Ateneo de Madrid and other loans from the Musée du Louvre, the Musée d'Orsay and the Musée Carnavalet-Histoire in Paris, the Maurithuis in The Hague, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Städel Museum in Frankfurt and the National Gallery of Art in Washington.