The town that trained Le Corbusier built its art museum in 1926, and gave the job to the teacher who had trained him and to the architect of his first house.
At a glance
La Chaux-de-Fonds is a watchmaking town in the Swiss Jura, laid out on a grid and listed by UNESCO for exactly that. Its fine arts museum occupies an Art Deco building inaugurated in 1926, the winning design of the artist Charles L’Éplattenier and the architect René Chapallaz. L’Éplattenier also made the sculpted railings of the grand staircase. Both men belong to the story of Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, later Le Corbusier: L’Éplattenier taught him at the art school here, and Chapallaz built his first houses. The museum is a protected monument.
Key facts
- Inaugurated: 1926
- Designers: Charles L’Éplattenier, artist, and René Chapallaz, architect — winners of the competition
- Style: Art Deco
- Interior: sculpted railings of the grand staircase by L’Éplattenier
- Protected: a classified historic monument
- Town: La Chaux-de-Fonds, UNESCO-listed with Le Locle for its watchmaking urban plan
- Connection: L’Éplattenier taught Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, later Le Corbusier, at the local art school
- GPS: 47.100479, 6.829521 — View on Google Maps
History
La Chaux-de-Fonds rebuilt itself on a grid after a fire in 1794, and the grid was organised around the watch trade: long streets, deep plots, workshops with north light. That town produced an art school with an unusual ambition, and Charles L’Éplattenier ran its advanced course in art and decoration, teaching his students to take their ornament from the local nature rather than from pattern books.
One of those students was Charles-Édouard Jeanneret. Another local figure, René Chapallaz, built Jeanneret’s earliest houses, including the Villa Fallet of 1905, which L’Éplattenier’s teaching shaped. When the town came to build its museum, it chose the same two men, working together.
The result, inaugurated in 1926, is an Art Deco building rather than a modernist one — a reminder that the town’s most famous son had by then left for Paris and taken a different road. The museum holds Swiss and international art from the nineteenth century onward, with a particular strength in regional painting.
What you see
A symmetrical, block-like front with the flattened geometric ornament of the middle 1920s, monumental without being classical. The building is designed to be read as a civic institution at the end of a street, and it works at that distance.
The staircase is the reason to go inside beyond the collection. L’Éplattenier made the sculpted railings himself, and they are the clearest surviving demonstration of what he had been teaching for twenty years: ornament derived from observation of the Jura, executed by an artist rather than bought from a catalogue.
Practical information
- Municipal museum with regular opening; closed Mondays in the usual Swiss pattern
- The UNESCO-listed town plan is best understood on foot — allow an extra hour
- Le Corbusier’s early houses, including the Villa Fallet and the Maison Blanche, are in the town and visitable
Getting there
La Chaux-de-Fonds is in the Neuchâtel Jura, about thirty minutes by train from Neuchâtel and just over two hours from Geneva. The museum is on Rue des Musées, ten minutes on foot from the station.
Nearby
- Zentrum Paul Klee — Renzo Piano’s museum in Bern, an hour and a half away
- Museum Wiesbaden — a museum building of the previous decade, for comparison
Sources
- Wikipedia (French), « Musée des Beaux-Arts de La Chaux-de-Fonds » — the 1926 inauguration, the winning design by Charles L’Éplattenier and René Chapallaz, the Art Deco character and the sculpted staircase railings
- Musée des beaux-arts La Chaux-de-Fonds, own pages — the building and the collection
- Wikipedia, « Charles L’Éplattenier » — the advanced course in art and decoration and his students, Jeanneret among them
- OpenStreetMap Nominatim — coordinates verified against Rue des Musées
Find it on the map
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