Doucet & Fayet: Two Forgotten Men Who Helped Create Modern Art

One of the greatest pleasures of travel, at least for me, is making connections. Not simply between places, but between people, ideas, and moments in history that at first seem entirely unrelated. A small museum visited one year suddenly explains a painting encountered in another city. A forgotten collector helps me understand an artist I have admired for decades. A chance exhibition ties everything together.

Avignon has become one of those places for me.

Most visitors come for the magnificent Palais des Papes, the Pont d’Avignon, and the remarkable medieval streets. All are worthy of their fame. But the longer I spend here, the more I find myself drawn to the quieter stories that rarely make the guidebooks.

The first of these discoveries came during my initial visit in 2024.

Almost by accident I wandered into the Musée Angladon–Collection Jacques Doucet, a small museum tucked away on a quiet street that many visitors never even notice. It turned out to be one of the most fascinating museums I have visited anywhere in France.

Before that afternoon I had never heard of Jacques Doucet.

Yet during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries he stood at the center of both Parisian fashion and the emerging world of modern art. As one of the pioneers of haute couture, his exquisite gowns dressed royalty, actresses, and society’s elite. Reading later about the passengers aboard the Titanic, I smiled when I discovered one prominent woman proudly described as wearing a gown by Doucet. In his day, his name carried the same prestige that Dior, Chanel, or Saint Laurent would later command.

Fashion, however, was only one part of his remarkable life.

Doucet possessed one of the greatest artistic eyes of his generation. Initially he assembled one of the finest collections of eighteenth-century French art ever created. Then, in a move that astonished the art world, he sold much of that collection and began buying the most daring contemporary artists of his day—often before anyone else recognized their genius.

Among his purchases were Van Gogh’s Irises, Rousseau’s mysterious The Snake Charmer, works by Cézanne, Manet, Degas, Braque, Modigliani, and, perhaps most famously of all, Picasso’s revolutionary Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Doucet purchased the painting directly from Picasso in 1924, becoming its first private owner and helping establish Picasso’s reputation as one of the defining artists of the twentieth century. Today the painting hangs in New York’s Museum of Modern Art, while many of Doucet’s other masterpieces reside in museums such as the Getty, the Musée d’Orsay, and institutions around the world. Their journey from one collector’s vision to the world’s greatest museums tells its own remarkable story.

Late in life Doucet became just as influential as a patron of interior design. He commissioned extraordinary modern interiors from young designers who would later define Art Deco, surrounding himself with furniture and decorative arts every bit as innovative as the paintings on his walls.

That connection unexpectedly resurfaced for me in March 2026 while wandering through an exhibition at Paris’s Musée des Arts Décoratifs devoted to the birth of Art Deco. There, without expecting it, I found myself standing inside one of Doucet’s remarkable interiors. Suddenly the small museum in Avignon connected with a grand exhibition in Paris, and the story became much richer.

Sadly, Jacques Doucet himself has largely faded from public memory. There is still no full English-language biography devoted to his extraordinary life. Having died without children, much of his collection was dispersed after his death. Fortunately, his descendants preserved enough of it to create the wonderful museum in Avignon, where visitors can still glimpse the extraordinary eye that helped shape modern art.

Then, during another visit to Avignon in the summer of 2026, I stumbled upon yet another forgotten collector whose story unexpectedly intertwined with Doucet’s. His name was Gustave Fayet.

Unlike Doucet, Fayet earned his fortune not in fashion but as the heir to a prosperous industrial family. Yet, like Doucet, he possessed an uncanny ability to recognize artistic genius before the rest of the world caught up. Although he painted throughout his life and was an accomplished artist himself, it is as a collector and patron that his greatest legacy endures. Few people did more to encourage Henri Rousseau during the years when many critics dismissed him as merely a gifted amateur. Fayet acquired important works, commissioned others, and became one of the painter’s most devoted supporters, helping secure Rousseau’s place among the giants of modern French painting.

My discovery of Fayet came not in a museum but at the Abbaye Saint-André in nearby Villeneuve-lès-Avignon. A small exhibition of his paintings introduced me to a man whose name I scarcely knew, yet whose influence quietly echoes throughout the history of modern art.

The abbey itself has an equally remarkable story. During the First World War, Fayet purchased the abandoned property for his close friend Elsa Koeberlé, whose family fortune had become inaccessible because it was tied up in Germany during the war. Once she was able to recover her finances she repaid Fayet, and the abbey became her life’s passion. Together with her lifelong companion, Génia Lioubow, she spent decades rescuing the crumbling buildings and creating what are now among the most beautiful gardens in Provence. Their vision transformed a neglected monastery into an extraordinary blend of history, architecture, and Italian-inspired terraces overlooking the Rhône and the skyline of Avignon.

Today the abbey remains in the family. Fortunately for visitors, they generously allow the public to wander through these magnificent gardens. Even more astonishing is how few people seem to know they exist. On each of my visits I have shared the grounds with only a few dozen others. In a region filled with famous attractions, it remains one of Provence’s most enchanting—and least discovered—places.

Unlike Jacques Doucet, whose reputation has gradually slipped into the shadows, Gustave Fayet appears to be on the verge of a well-deserved revival. This autumn the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris will open a major exhibition devoted to Henri Rousseau and the visionary collector who championed him, reuniting works from Fayet’s collection that have long been scattered around the world. It promises not only to celebrate Rousseau but also to restore Fayet to the place he deserves in the history of modern art.

As for me, I now look differently at Rousseau’s magnificent The Tiger in a Tropical Storm (Surprised!), which I was fortunate enough to admire years ago at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. At the time I simply appreciated a beautiful painting. Today I see something much more: the vision of collectors like Doucet and Fayet, whose belief in artists before the rest of the world believed helped change the course of art history.

That, ultimately, is why I continue returning to Avignon.

Its greatest treasures are not always the ones towering above the skyline. Sometimes they are the forgotten lives, quiet museums, and unexpected stories that slowly reveal themselves to anyone willing to linger a little longer.