Chagall or Lenepveu or both? Row over Paris opera house dome enters legal arena

In 1962, the then French culture minister, André Malraux, reportedly bored by the ballet he was watching at Paris’s opera house, raised his eyes to the classical ceiling and decided it needed a makeover.

In his ennui, Malraux thought his friend and artist Marc Chagall, sitting next to him at the Palais Garnier at the time, was the man for the job and commissioned him to make a new ceiling.

Over the next two years, Chagall worked in secret and for free to produce 24 enormous and colourful wedge-shaped canvasses, that were installed over the original 19th-century classical ceiling by the now forgotten artist Jules-Eugène Lenepveu.

Today, more than four decades after Chagall’s death, one of Lenepveu’s descendants is planning legal action to have the original ceiling uncovered and restored.

Arnaud Carayon says he has “asked nicely” for this to happen for three years, including writing two letters to France’s president, Emmanuel Macron. Now he has instructed a lawyer to take the fight to court.

“The Lenepveu ceiling is classified as a historic monument and yet it hasn’t been seen for 60 years and we have no idea what state it is in,” Carayon said.

“Today, everyone has forgotten Lenepveu. Unfortunately, he was swept away by the wave of impressionism, but in his time he was really a star. More importantly, he was specifically chosen to decorate the opera ceiling by Charles Garnier, who designed everything in the opera house right down to the last door knob.

“But on a whim, Malraux decided he did not agree with Garnier’s choice.”

Garnier’s opera house was commissioned by Napoleon III and opened in January 1875 in the presence of European royals and political figures including the then lord mayor of London, Sir William Cotton.

Lenepveu, who was Garnier’s friend and artistic collaborator, produced a classical and allegorical work painted in oil directly on the copper plates of the dome. The work, called The Muses and the Hours of Day and Night, and given historic listing in 1923, was considered perfectly in keeping with the ornate Second Empire style of Garnier’s palace.

Lenepveu, who went on to lead the French Academy in Rome, later produced a series of Joan of Arc frescoes in the Paris Panthéon, but his name is little known today.

Malraux is said to have wanted to give the fusty opera house a more modern, edgy feel. Chagall’s 24 cake-slice shaped canvasses were spliced together around the central chandelier covering 220 sq metres (2,368 sq ft) of the dome. The work is divided into separate colours: red, blue, green, yellow and white; and features dancers, angels, musicians and the names of composers.

Even before Chagall’s work was installed, the row between traditionalists and modernists erupted and reached the other side of the Channel.

The Royal Institute of British Architects in London wrote to the culture minister asking him to abandon him plans to cover the original ceiling. “The unique character of this edifice [the opera house] is based on the fact that all its elements: architecture, paintings, sculptures and mosaics work together in harmony,” Riba wrote. Its plea was ignored.

The Palais Garnier will be closed for renovation between 2027-32, and Carayon, the president of the Friends of Lenepveu Society, said he had written to Macron to suggest alternating the Lenepveu and Chagall ceilings after it reopens, with each being shown for a decade. He said the Élysée Palace replied only that the president was “particularly attentive” to the subject.

“From the beginning, the Chagall ceiling was designed to be removable. It can be taken down without any damage. We thought the idea of alternating ceilings was very positive and promising, but it seems nobody has the guts to touch the Chagall ceiling,” Carayon said.

At a 2023-24 Chagall exhibition at the Pompidou Centre, the curator, Anne Montfort-Tanguy, said: “The ceiling [of the opera house] is Chagall: it’s his autobiography, his vision of Paris. All the artists he loved are represented as well as what he considered the most important Paris monuments like the Eiffel Tower … It’s a moving, fluid almost cinematic work. The ceiling is a complete work of art.

“It was Chagall’s gift to the country that welcomed him; an homage to France and to Paris,” Montfort-Tanguy added.

Alexander Neef, the director of the Paris Opera, told Le Monde: “The debate over the Chagall ceiling has gone on for more than 60 years. The Lenepveu ceiling has been listed as a historic monument since 1923 so its heritage value is recognised. That his [Lenepveu’s] descendants wish to defend his memory is legitimate.”