The heavy metal bars, armored doors and safes. The delicacy of sun-drenched landscapes, the heady scent of orange blossoms and a beautiful coastline. La Banque, a museum of cultures and landscapes, plays with finesse these paradoxes. Opened last November, this latest addition to Hyères museums is nestled in a former branch of the Banque de France acquired by the municipality of Hyères-les-Palmiers (Var) after its closure, against the background of the changeover to the euro, in 2004.
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Stany Sassy, La Calanque à Carqueiranne, oil on canvas, first half of the 20th century. / The Bank, Museum of Cultures and Landscape/F. Joncour
With this sumptuous building built in the 1920s, and whose very elegant renovation has judiciously preserved the attractions of its previous life, stained glass windows, mosaics, safe and cash room, Hyères reveals the richness of its municipal fund. And celebrates, with a temporary exhibition, “Facing the sun, 1850-1950”, the landscapes of Provence, an eternal source of inspiration for painters.
A History of Painting, South Face
A walk on the ground floor of the former banking establishment gives the full measure. Late 19th century classicisme century, as evidenced by this delicate canvas sun and dust by Édouard Crémieux or even Le Col de la Gineste by Émile Loubon, reveals a Provence of scrubland crushed by heat where only goats and their shepherds roam.
At the turn of the century, the industrial revolution begins. The ports are industrious like that of Marseille under the paw of Louis-Mathieu Verdilhan, recognizable by the thick black lines with which he hems all its contours. And we can also guess, in parallel, a pictorial revolution.
→ CRITICAL. At the Musée de l’Orangerie, the forgotten decorations of the Impressionists
Point Impressionism. The pointillism of Cavaliere Bay by Henri-Edmond Cross (see below) simply makes you want to dive into it… Fauvism follows. With Albert Marquet or Charles Camoin here, he saturates the canvases with light and makes the colors explode. The Mediterranean landscape and the scorching sun are no longer subjects in themselves, but revealing emotions and sensations. The yellow sun de Chagall, who closes the course, does not say anything else.
Henri-Edmond Cross, Bay of Cavalière or The beach of Saint-Clair, 1906 -1907, oil on canvas. / Annonciade Museum, Saint-Tropez/Pierre-Stéphane Azema
Get out of clichés
This is the whole point of this lovely museum. Do not enclose this Mediterranean, however inspiring it may be, in clichés. “Our ambition was to find the right equation, to preserve the identity of the place but also to offer a museum inscribed in modernity”, explains Claire Fontaine, the director of the city’s culture and heritage centre.
A successful bet, by climbing to the first level, that of the permanent collections. These rooms are intended to highlight local history through pieces accumulated since 1883, when the municipal museum was then created by… three ornithologists.
Le Tortillard, known as Le Macaron, coastal railway to San Salvador, by Paul Levéré. / The Bank, Museum of Cultures and Landscape/F. Joncour
“Our collections are very heterogeneous”, smiles Claire Fontaine. This allows welcome fantasies. In a half-chronological, half-thematic journey, all means are good – photos, paintings, films, stuffed birds or orders for contemporary pieces… – to grasp the transformation of this corner of the Var coast.