Exhibition at the Villa Montebello Museum – Meteorological Wonders

From Saturday 17 October 2026 to Sunday 3 January 2027, the Villa Montebello Museum is hosting an exhibition dedicated to skies as depicted by artists from the 19th century to the present day: ‘Meteorological Beauties’.

Come rain or shine, painters have always been fascinated by light and its variations, by its reflections on the water or on the shimmering clothes of bathers. From the arrival of the Romantics on the Normandy coast to the present day, the sky — whether sunny, cloudy, overcast or wet — offers an infinite variety of colours and inspiring landscapes. Through a rich selection of works from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, this exhibition traces how the sky and its meteorological whims have fuelled artistic inspiration for nearly two centuries.

Rather than a chronological journey, the exhibition is organised around weather moods: sunsets, rain, Normandy’s fine weather — that patch of blue sky dotted with grey-white clouds so characteristic of the region — or even storms. This side-by-side comparison of generations reveals the enduring fascination with the skies, particularly by the seaside.

Visitors will thus be able to discover works by Eugène Boudin, Charles Mozin, Félix Buhot, Eugène Isabey, Jacques Leudet, Jean-Baptiste Sécheret, Jean Dries, Robert Surcouf, André Hambourg, Olivier Mériel, Pierre Chapuis, Jules Héreau, Jules Noël, Félix Oudart, Fernand Truffaut, Maxime Lalanne, Lucien Coutaud, Krystyna Kaminska, Francis Miller, Pierre Collin and Jacques Pasquier, spanning a variety of genres and media — paintings, engravings, lithographs and photographs.

Among the standout works in the exhibition are ‘Marine, les Écores’, Trouville (1839) by Eugène Isabey, which showcases all the lyricism of nascent Romanticism in a blazing sunset sky over the River Touques — an artistic revolution which, on this Normandy coast, saw painters abandon their Parisian studios in favour of the grandeur of nature. André Hambourg’s *Beau temps à Trouville* (Fine Weather in Trouville), by contrast, captures the overwhelming midday heat on the fine sandy beach, where the sun, filling the entire upper half of the canvas, becomes the subject of the painting itself. As for Félix Buhot, in *Un grain* (1874) he chooses a rare moment seldom depicted by his contemporaries — that when the wind picks up and the rain abruptly drives the holidaymakers from the beach — far removed from the conventional images of the seaside.

The exhibition also transcends the boundaries between techniques and art forms: paintings and engravings feature alongside photographs and pastels, as well as music, with *Le Miracle de la tempête*, a highly expressive piece composed by Édouard Devernay, organist at Notre-Dame-des-Victoires in Trouville-sur-Mer from 1912 to 1952, which draws the listener alongside the fishermen braving the dangers of the storm.

The museum’s exceptional setting, housed in the Villa Montebello, also serves as a reminder that a 19th-century seaside villa was, above all, designed – for the high-society receptions that must have been a frequent occurrence there – as an invitation to gaze out at the sea. On the cusp of climate change, the meteorological upheavals of which are already being felt, ‘Meteorological Beauties’ highlights the timeless nature of this fascination with the sky, particularly when it is changeable and capricious, as it is in Trouville.

Practical information:
– Dates: 17 October 2026 to 3 January 2027
– Venue: Villa Montebello Museum, Trouville-sur-Mer
– Opening hours: Monday to Friday from 2.00 pm to 5.30 pm; Saturdays, Sundays, public holidays and every day during school holidays from 10.00 am to 12.00 pm and from 2.00 pm to 5.30 pm
– Admission: full price €8, concessions €4
– The admission fee includes access to the permanent collections and temporary exhibitions