A Texan couple who grew up dreaming of one day visiting France has made the largest foreign donation of paintings to the Musee d’Orsay since the Second World War.
Marlene and Spencer Hays, both aged 80, are to give 600 works, valued at £315 million, to the Paris museum – including pieces by Degas, Modigliani and Rodin.
The couple donated an initial 187 pieces, worth £155 million, during an official ceremony presided over by Francois Hollande at the Elysée presidential palace on Saturday evening. The rest will be handed over on their death, on the proviso that it is kept together.
“Even in our wildest dreams, we never thought that we’d come here to donate a collection of art work to the French, to the Musee d’Orsay!” said Mr Hays.
Indeed, the business tycoon has frequently admitted that he could never have envisaged the path his life has taken – and he retains a sense of wonder.
"Every night, before I go to bed, I spend at least 45 minutes to an hour plus walking around looking at every painting,” he said. “Because that's what's so wonderful about the Nabis (a group of artists) — you can always discover something else."
Born into a poor family in the town of Ardmore, Oklahoma, he was raised by his mother and grandmother before moving as a child to the Texan town of Gainesville.
He became a star basketball player in high school, despite being only 5’10”, but won a basketball scholarship to Fort Worth’s Texas Christian University.
He joined a publishing company, Southwestern/Great American, which since the 1850s had hired university students to sell books, mainly bibles.
According to Forbes: “Selling came naturally to Hays. He remembers when he was seven and his grandmother was trying to sell a litter of puppies. She put pretty pink ribbons around their necks so they would stand out, Hays recalls. It worked.”
Mr Hays went to become the president of the company, based in Nashville, Tennessee.
In 1966 he founded a suit company, the Tom James Co. — named after the son of one of Mr Hays’s former Sunday school teachers.
His empire of businesses - still based on the door-to-door model - now includes publishing, tailoring and health insurance. But he has let his employees, many of whom have stock, know that they will inherit the companies on his death, rather than his wife or two daughters.
When travelling on business, he still flies economy – despite being worth around $400 million, according to Forbes, in 1997.
And Mr and Mrs Hays are well known philanthropists, donating $2 million to his alma mater, the Texas Christian University - on whose board he sat for a decade - to build a theatre.
But their real passion is art.
The couple began buying works of art in the early 1970s, initially focused on late 19th and early 20th century American painting.
Then, after their first visit to France, their horizons broadened.
"When Marlene and I grew up in a little old town in Texas, even visiting France was far beyond our expectations," said Mr Hays. "But in 1971, we made our first trip to Paris, and our love affair with this wonderful country began. We've returned every year, and our passion has grown."
In the early 1980s they discovered the Nabis – a school of art in the 1890s in France, named after the Hebrew word for prophet - and immediately fell under the spell of Bonnard, Maurice Denis, Maillol, Ranson and Vuillard.
Guy Cogeval, the head of the Musee d’Orsay, said he was impressed by Mr Hays' passion.
"Very, very rarely in my life did I see a person so much in love with French art," he said in 2013, when the Hays exhibited a selection of their art in the museum.
Isabelle Cahn, curator of that 2013 exhibition, said: "When Spencer came before the opening of the exhibition, he told me that he was afraid that his collection was not at the same level as the paintings and the sculpture in the Musee d'Orsay.
“But now we know that it is the same level. It is why it is so beautiful, and we are so happy to have it."
Mr Cogeval said their Francophilia showed in the home that they built in Nashville —an exact replica of the Hotel de Noirmoutier palace, currently home of the Paris prefet, built in the city in 1724.
"He wanted to use the limestone from Paris and he wanted every button, every opening, every faucet exactly to be French," said Mr Cogeval.
The Hays raided French antique shops for the furniture and silverware to fill the house, and inside that Nashville palace they installed all the French art they'd been collecting.
The couple also own a Manhattan apartment, with 1920s chairs by Paul Follot and paintings, sculptures, drawings, and rare books filling every room.
A Degas, Breakfast after the Bath, greets the visitor in the entrance hall of the flat. Caillebotte's Lobster, painted in 1883, has pride of place in the dining room.
Among their finest paintings is one by Fernand Pelez, Grimaces and Misery Circus performers - an initial version of a monumental painting now in the Petit Palais in Paris.
In 2001, they bought the Portrait of Soutine that Modigliani had painted on a door of the apartment of the art dealer Léopold Sborowski. The portrait, completed in one sitting, is described by the Musee d’Orsay as “a moving testimony to a fragile and destitute artist in the bohemian heyday of Montparnasse.”
Mr Hays said he favours drawings – particularly unusual works like Bonnard's poster designs and Toulouse-Lautrec's study for the cover of the monthly review L'Image.
In 2008 they bought what they say is their favourite work - the seventh panel of Vuillard's Public Gardens, entitled Little Girls Walking. It shows two of the apprentices employed by Vuillard's mother in her dressmaking studio, as they stroll in the Tuileries gardens.
The Musee d'Orsay has five others, from this series of nine – meaning that, with the donation, six will be together for the first time in over half a century.
Audrey Azoulay, the French culture minister, described the Hays’ gift as “exceptional.”
“This donation, which is exceptional for its size and coherence, is the largest a French museum has received from a foreign donor since 1945,” she said.
Marlene and Spencer Hays, both aged 80, are to give 600 works, valued at £315 million, to the Paris museum – including pieces by Degas, Modigliani and Rodin.
The couple donated an initial 187 pieces, worth £155 million, during an official ceremony presided over by Francois Hollande at the Elysée presidential palace on Saturday evening. The rest will be handed over on their death, on the proviso that it is kept together.
“Even in our wildest dreams, we never thought that we’d come here to donate a collection of art work to the French, to the Musee d’Orsay!” said Mr Hays.
Indeed, the business tycoon has frequently admitted that he could never have envisaged the path his life has taken – and he retains a sense of wonder.
"Every night, before I go to bed, I spend at least 45 minutes to an hour plus walking around looking at every painting,” he said. “Because that's what's so wonderful about the Nabis (a group of artists) — you can always discover something else."
He became a star basketball player in high school, despite being only 5’10”, but won a basketball scholarship to Fort Worth’s Texas Christian University.
He joined a publishing company, Southwestern/Great American, which since the 1850s had hired university students to sell books, mainly bibles.
Mr Hays went to become the president of the company, based in Nashville, Tennessee.
In 1966 he founded a suit company, the Tom James Co. — named after the son of one of Mr Hays’s former Sunday school teachers.
His empire of businesses - still based on the door-to-door model - now includes publishing, tailoring and health insurance. But he has let his employees, many of whom have stock, know that they will inherit the companies on his death, rather than his wife or two daughters.
When travelling on business, he still flies economy – despite being worth around $400 million, according to Forbes, in 1997.
And Mr and Mrs Hays are well known philanthropists, donating $2 million to his alma mater, the Texas Christian University - on whose board he sat for a decade - to build a theatre.
But their real passion is art.
The couple began buying works of art in the early 1970s, initially focused on late 19th and early 20th century American painting.
Then, after their first visit to France, their horizons broadened.
"When Marlene and I grew up in a little old town in Texas, even visiting France was far beyond our expectations," said Mr Hays. "But in 1971, we made our first trip to Paris, and our love affair with this wonderful country began. We've returned every year, and our passion has grown."
In the early 1980s they discovered the Nabis – a school of art in the 1890s in France, named after the Hebrew word for prophet - and immediately fell under the spell of Bonnard, Maurice Denis, Maillol, Ranson and Vuillard.
Guy Cogeval, the head of the Musee d’Orsay, said he was impressed by Mr Hays' passion.
"Very, very rarely in my life did I see a person so much in love with French art," he said in 2013, when the Hays exhibited a selection of their art in the museum.
“But now we know that it is the same level. It is why it is so beautiful, and we are so happy to have it."
Mr Cogeval said their Francophilia showed in the home that they built in Nashville —an exact replica of the Hotel de Noirmoutier palace, currently home of the Paris prefet, built in the city in 1724.
"He wanted to use the limestone from Paris and he wanted every button, every opening, every faucet exactly to be French," said Mr Cogeval.
The Hays raided French antique shops for the furniture and silverware to fill the house, and inside that Nashville palace they installed all the French art they'd been collecting.
The couple also own a Manhattan apartment, with 1920s chairs by Paul Follot and paintings, sculptures, drawings, and rare books filling every room.
A Degas, Breakfast after the Bath, greets the visitor in the entrance hall of the flat. Caillebotte's Lobster, painted in 1883, has pride of place in the dining room.
Among their finest paintings is one by Fernand Pelez, Grimaces and Misery Circus performers - an initial version of a monumental painting now in the Petit Palais in Paris.
In 2001, they bought the Portrait of Soutine that Modigliani had painted on a door of the apartment of the art dealer Léopold Sborowski. The portrait, completed in one sitting, is described by the Musee d’Orsay as “a moving testimony to a fragile and destitute artist in the bohemian heyday of Montparnasse.”
Mr Hays said he favours drawings – particularly unusual works like Bonnard's poster designs and Toulouse-Lautrec's study for the cover of the monthly review L'Image.
In 2008 they bought what they say is their favourite work - the seventh panel of Vuillard's Public Gardens, entitled Little Girls Walking. It shows two of the apprentices employed by Vuillard's mother in her dressmaking studio, as they stroll in the Tuileries gardens.
The Musee d'Orsay has five others, from this series of nine – meaning that, with the donation, six will be together for the first time in over half a century.
Audrey Azoulay, the French culture minister, described the Hays’ gift as “exceptional.”
“This donation, which is exceptional for its size and coherence, is the largest a French museum has received from a foreign donor since 1945,” she said.
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