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The municipal collections of the city of Soissons were founded during the Revolutionary period in connection with the teaching of the Drawing School (1782). The school’s director, Jean-Louis-Joseph Hoyer, helped to retain for the city the Adoration of the Shepherds, painted by Peter Paul Rubens and studio around 1620 (Soissons Cathedral). Hoyer’s style of teaching was based on the study and copying of Flemish art, as attested by a copy by the painter Eugène Salingre, who trained in Soissons, of an Anthony van Dyck self-portrait. Although prior to the First World War the collections numbered only one Flemish or Dutch work (Attack by Bandits, attributed to Philips Wouwerman), they now include masterpieces by Benjamin Cuyp, Frans Francken (II) and Ambrosius Francken (II), Franciscus Gijsbrechts, Dirck Govertsz. van Heel, Claes Moeyaert, Gerard van Nijmegen, Jan Peeters, Daniël Seghers, and Artus Wolffort, all of which entered the collections thanks to the generosity of local donors and an ambitious purchasing policy. There are also a number of state deposits, such as Peeter Boel’s Assembly of Animals (on loan from the Musée du Louvre) and a group of paintings on the inventory of the Musées Nationaux Récupération (Maerten van Cleef [I], Aelbert Cuyp, Gijsbert de Hondecoeter, Egbert Lievensz. van der Poel, Jacobus Ferdinandus Saey, Sebastiaan Vrancx).

Dr. Christophe Brouard, Director of the Musées de Soissons (March 2025)