Alfred Bruyas (15 August 1821 – 1 January 1877) was an art collector and a personal friend of many important artists of his time, among them

Gustave Courbet Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet ( , , ; 10 June 1819 – 31 December 1877) was a French painter who led the Realism movement in 19th-century French painting. Committed to painting only what he could see, he rejected academic convention and t ...

. He donated his collection to the

Musée Fabre The Musée Fabre is a museum in the southern French city of Montpellier, capital of the Hérault ''département''. The museum was founded by François-Xavier Fabre, a Montpellier painter, in 1825. Beginning in 2003, the museum underwent a 61.2 m ...

, in

Montpellier Montpellier (, , ; oc, Montpelhièr ) is a city in southern France near the Mediterranean Sea. One of the largest urban centres in the region of Occitania (administrative region), Occitania, Montpellier is the prefecture of the Departments of ...

. Born Jacques Louis Bruyas, he was the son of a wealthy banker in Montpellier. His interest in art was clear even at school. In 1840 he studied at the studio of Charles Matet, however he soon recognized the limits of his own talents and shifted his focus to the promotion and collection of contemporary art. From 1849 to 1854 he spent most of his time in Paris. There he collected work by Louis Hector Allemand, Camille Corot,

Thomas Couture Thomas Couture (21 December 1815 – 30 March 1879) was a French history painter and teacher. He taught such later luminaries of the art world as Édouard Manet, Henri Fantin-Latour, John La Farge,Wilkinson, Burke. ''The Life and Works of A ...

Eugène Delacroix Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix ( , ; 26 April 1798 – 13 August 1863) was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school.Noon, Patrick, et al., ''Crossing the Channel: Britis ...

, Narcisse Diaz de Peña, Adrien Guignet, Adolphe Hervier,

Prosper Marilhat Antoine-George-Prosper Marilhat, usually known as Prosper Marilhat, (26 March 1811 – 13 September 1847) was a French Orientalist painter. Many of his most successful works were based on the sketches he drew during the time he spent in Egypt i ...

, Edouard-Antoine Marsal,

Jean-François Millet Jean-François Millet (; 4 October 1814 – 20 January 1875) was a French artist and one of the founders of the Barbizon school in rural France. Millet is noted for his paintings of peasant farmers and can be categorized as part of the Realism ...

Théodore Rousseau Étienne Pierre Théodore Rousseau (April 15, 1812December 22, 1867) was a French painter of the Barbizon school. Life Youth He was born in Paris, France in a bourgeois family. At first he received a basic level of training, but soon displaye ...

, Philippe-Joseph Tassaert, Marcel Verdier and

Constant Troyon Constant Troyon (August 28, 1810 – February 21, 1865) was a French painter of the Barbizon school. In the early part of his career he painted mostly landscapes. It was only comparatively late in life that Troyon found his ''métier'' as a pa ...

, but above all the work of

External links

Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet!: The Bruyas Collection from the Musée Fabre, Montpellier
1821 births 1877 deaths Art collectors from Paris {{art-stub