Dispute over Marc Chagall's painting under the ceiling of the Paris Opera flares up again in France

Arnaud Caron, Lenepveu's great-great-great-grandson, leads the Society of Friends of Lenepveu, founded 39 years ago. In 2022, he restored the artist's tomb in Angers, and before that, in 2022, a major retrospective of Lenepveu's 260 works was held at the Angers Museum of Fine Arts. Jules-Eugène Lenepveu is best known for his historical paintings, including frescoes about Joan of Arc in the Pantheon in Paris.

Now Caron has appealed to French President Emmanuel Macron with a request to return Lenepveu's original work to public view and is even considering legal action.

Lenepveu's painting "The Muses and the Hours of Day and Night" was created between 1869 and 1871. Around 1869, the architect Charles Garnier commissioned the artist to paint the dome above the hall where the auditorium of the Paris Opera was later located. Lenepveu applied oil paint directly onto the copper plates of the dome. The work blended well with the Second Empire style in which the Palais Garnier was built.

About 90 years later, French Minister of Culture André Malraux proposed that Marc Chagall create a new mural for the same location. The idea arose after one of the less successful performances, and was also related to the desire to make the Opera's image more modern and accessible to the general public.

At the same time, Chagall himself did not want to destroy his predecessor's work. His son later recounted that his father insisted on the possibility of removing the new structure so that Lenepveu's mural would be preserved. However, at that time, critics opposed the idea of replacing the old classical mural with modern art. The Royal Institute of British Architects even sent a letter warning of the need to preserve the interior's harmony.

Chagall, who was 72 at the time, refused a fee for the work. His three assistants prepared 24 canvases, from which the new composition was assembled. All of them were mounted on a plastic base installed above Lenepveu's mural. Chagall's bright and at the same time fairytale-like work is dedicated to 14 great European composers of the 18th-20th centuries.

The new mural was unveiled to the public in September 1964 and received positive reviews from the press. Later, similar operatic murals by Chagall also appeared at the Lincoln Center in New York.

However, debates about which ceiling should be primary continue to this day. Some believe that Lenepveu's work should be restored and displayed. Others propose commissioning a new ceiling from a different artist every few decades. One of Chagall's former assistants even warned that removing his work could lead to a decrease in the number of Opera visitors.

In a letter to Macron, Caron proposed a compromise: to alternate the two ceilings, for example, by changing them every 10 years. In this way, both Lenepveu's mural and Chagall's work could take turns being visible to visitors. Macron's administration replied to Caron that the president is "extremely attentive" to this issue.

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