Without altering its historic flavor, the townhouse was redesigned in the 1930s by the Parisian architect Auguste Perret,[2] to house the collection that Maurice Magnin, a year after the death of his sister Jeanne, willed to the State in 1938.

The two Putti Musicians by Laurent de La Hyre, The dream of Poliphile by Eustache Le Sueur and The Holy Family by Sébastien Bourdon all illustrate the Parisian Atticism of the years between 1640 and 1650.

The 18th century has not been neglected, but is more represented by drawings and paintings of minor masters (Hyacinthe Collin de Vermont, Michel-François Dandré-Bardon, Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre), than the grand painters like Jean-Antoine Watteau and Jean-Honoré Fragonard whose works acquired by the Magnins are no longer attributed to them.

Here one finds fewer beacons of Neo-classicism, Romanticism or Realism than paintings of François-Xavier Fabre, Pauline Gauffier or for the Post-revolutionary period the subtle and extremely rare landscapes of Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson.

Their appreciation of the intimist works of the 1830s is obvious in their choice of artists such as François Marius Granet, Étienne Bouhot or for the Romantic period, Paul Delaroche, Alexandre-Évariste Fragonard or Eugène Devéria.