The Toulouse-Lautrec museum
Cité épiscopale d’Albi
As part of the 1905 law separating the church and the state, the Berbie palace was granted to the Tarn Department in an agreement signed the 19th June 1907 and became a municipal museum.
After the completion of renovations which were interrupted by the war of 1914-18, the museum received the Rochegude collection, a motley assortment of prehistoric relics and mediocre paintings of limited interest.
However, in 1922 the family of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, originally from Albi, donated more than a thousand of his works, paintings, lithographies, drawings and posters to the museum.
This exceptional collection is displayed at the Berbie palace, the powerful 13th century fortress thus became the largest museum in the world to be dedicated to the works of Toulouse-Lautrec, born in Albi in 1864.
This important collection was donated by the artist’s parents, the Count and Countess de Toulouse-Lautrec, upon the advice of Maurice Joyant, a friend of the artist, and by his cousin, Dr Tapié de Céleyran.
In addition to this considerable collection, the museum also exhibits a collection of modern art by friends of contemporaries of Toulouse-Lautrec as well as by Parisian artists from the period between the two World Wars.
