The modern art collection at Aix’s Granet Museum was considerably expanded in 2011 when the Jean and Suzanne Planque Foundation donated the Jean Planque collection, named after the Swiss painter and collector who died in 1998. To house the collection the museum was expanded into the nearby Chapelle des Pénitents blanc, an impressive seventeenth-century chapel.

The collection includes some 300 paintings, drawings and sculptures by Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists, including Renoir, Monet, Van Gogh, Degas and Redon, as well as major artists of the twentieth century, including Bonnard, Rouault, Braque, Dufy, Léger and Klee. Planque became close friends with Pablo Picasso during his time as advisor to the Galerie Beyeler in the 1960s and over time amassed a collection of more than twenty of his works.

Paul Cezanne ‘Bathers’ (c.1895)

Edgar Degas ‘Two Bathers’ (c.1895)

Claude Monet ‘Leicester Square’ (1901)

Pierre Bonnard ‘Torso of a Woman in Profile’ (c.1918)

Paul Klee ‘Un son de la flore nordique’ (1924)

Fernand Léger ‘The Rose and Compass’ (1925)

Pablo Picasso ‘Compotier avec fruits et couverts’ (1924)

Pablo Picasso ‘Le Sauvetage’ (1933)

Pablo Picasso ‘Femme au chapeau dans un fauteuil’ (1939)

Pablo Picasso ‘Femme au chat assise dans un fauteuil’ (1964)

Pablo Picasso ‘Nu et homme à la pipe (La Conversation)’ (1968)