Liaisons françaises: Munich's Alte Pinakothek Shows Its French Paintings, from Claude Lorrain to Boucher
For the first time in its history, the Alte Pinakothek in Munich is devoting a major exhibition to its own French paintings. Liaisons françaises: French Art in Bavaria from Claude Lorrain to François Boucher runs from 26 November 2026 to 4 April 2027 and brings together works by around fifty artists, from the poetic landscapes of Claude Lorrain to the elegance of the Rococo, enriched by loans from Germany and abroad.
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What: Liaisons françaises: French Art in Bavaria from Claude Lorrain to François Boucher
Where: Alte Pinakothek, Munich (ground floor west)
When: 26 November 2026 – 4 April 2027; opening on 25 November
Who: Around fifty French artists, including Claude Lorrain, Nicolas Poussin, François Lemoyne and François Boucher
Section: Museums & Exhibitions
What happened
The Alte Pinakothek has announced the exhibition on its website, and Art History News reported it on 29 October 2026. According to the museum, its French collection was assembled by the House of Wittelsbach, the family that ruled Bavaria, and is unmatched among German museums in scope and breadth. Paintings by Claude Lorrain reached Bavaria as early as the seventeenth century, and French portraitists were employed at the Munich court. In 1698 Max Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria, bought Nicolas Poussin’s Midas and Bacchus. Around 1800, after a dynastic succession united the Wittelsbach galleries of Munich, Mannheim, Düsseldorf and Zweibrücken, more major French works arrived, among them François Lemoyne’s The Hunting Party, the picture the museum has chosen to announce the show.
Why it matters
Munich is famous above all for its Rubens, Dürer and Italian masters, so its French paintings are easy to walk past. Seen together, they tell a story of politics as much as art: court commissions, princely purchases and inheritances that carried pictures from Paris and Rome to Bavaria over two centuries. The museum describes the show as tracing several centuries of political, cultural and artistic “liaisons” between Bavaria and France, a fine reason to plan a winter visit to Munich.
The painting behind the story
The exhibition begins with Claude Lorrain, the French painter who, like his compatriot Poussin, made his career in Rome. As the National Gallery of Art in Washington explains, Claude grounded his landscapes in careful observation of nature but turned them into a timeless, idealised world through his mastery of sunlight and his strict structuring of space. In The Judgment of Paris, painted in 1645–46 and now in Washington, the Trojan shepherd Paris must choose which of three goddesses is the most beautiful, a choice that would lead to the Trojan War. Claude sets the scene in a calm Italian landscape bathed in soft light. For a Rococo painter of the next century, see our post on The Swing by Fragonard.
Hang Claude Lorrain’s Judgment of Paris as a vintage art poster from the Sapiens Verbum print shop.
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Prefer the original? Hang Claude Lorrain’s Judgment of Paris — the goddesses, the river and the golden Italian light — as a print, canvas or framed print from the Sapiens Verbum print shop.
Choose your size and frame →Boucher’s Rising of the Sun as a print →Printed and shipped by Fine Art America · 30-day money-back guarantee
💬 Over to you: Claude’s calm landscapes or Boucher’s Rococo charm: which side of French painting would you visit Munich for? And where in the world are you reading from? Tell us in the comments.
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