Since 1824 · Cologne, seven centuries of painting and Corboud Foundation

From medieval Colonial panels to French impressionism, the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum tells how collection, preservation and patronage have constructed a European history of painting.

The history of the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum begins with Ferdinand Franz Wallraf, canon, professor and collector who saved numerous works during the secularization of the churches and convents of Cologne. When he died in 1824, he bequeathed to the city nearly ten thousand paintings, drawings and engravings, as well as books, manuscripts and objects. The merchant Johann Heinrich Richartz then financed the first building, inaugurated in 1861. The collection went through destruction, nazi confiscations and 20th century reorganizations before entering the building of Oswald Mathias Ungers in 2001. The same year, the Corboud Foundation provided a major collection of impressionist and works on permanent loan post-impressionists. The museum today brings together medieval painting from Cologne, European baroque, German romanticism, realism and French modernity. The reproductions available here notably compare Rembrandt and Caspar David Friedrich, Monet and Signac, four ways to use light, material and space. The "Wallraf-Richartz-Museum" selection notably compares Oak under the snow and Self-portrait in Zeuxis. His reading favors the material.

Wallraf was born from a gesture of safeguarding: saving the works of Cologne, then continuing to broaden their conversation with Europe.