Resoonances. The Louvre museum comes to Reunion.

Following the footsteps of a Creole from Bourbon island in Paris, during the reign of Louis XVI - Villèle museum

In 1784, when he discovered France, and more specifically Paris, for the first time, Henri Paulin Panon‑Desbassayns (1732‑1800), a rich Creole landowner from Bourbon island, visited the palace of the Louvre several times, in order to “admire the paintings already seen several times and that (he) found so beautiful”. He was far from imagining that his beautiful mansion, built in the style of a “palace of Malabar architecture” in the hills above Saint-Gilles along the coast of Bourbon island, would one day become one of the island’s five ‘Museums of France’.

History has gone full circle and today it is the Villèle museum, a museum of a way of life and of slavery, is exhibiting a selection of works from the collections of the Louvre, essentially consisting of 18th century drawings and engravings.

The choice of works reflects the Creole traveller’s stay in Paris, the subjects that retained his attention and were the object of comments he made, which we can read in his ’Petit journal des époques pour servir à ma mémoire ’ (1784‑ 1786) (Little diary of the period, written as a reminder: 1784-1786), edited by the Villèle museum.

His notes, written daily with the sole purpose of retaining memories of his long journey, rich in discovery, are written in their own specific style and have their imperfections. We can be certain that the unique combination of these notes and the works conserved in the Louvre will give visitors a glimpse into a few fascinating traits of character of this ‘rich White’ from Bourbon, one of the island’s wealthiest Creole landowners.