The collection features over three hundred Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings by Claude Monet, including his 1872 Impression, Sunrise.

The latter moved into the lodge and, with an interest in the Napoleonic era, he expanded his father's collection of paintings, furniture and bronzes.

On October 27, 1985, during daylight hours, five masked gunmen with pistols threatening security and visitors entered the museum and stole nine paintings from the collection.

[2][3] A tip-off led to the arrest in Japan of a yakuza gangster named Shuinichi Fujikuma who had spent time in French prison for trafficking heroin and was sentenced for five years.

[5] Though originally a showcase for pieces from the First Empire, the nature of the museum's collection began to change with two major donations.

Since 1975 the museum has organized two exhibitions annually dedicated to an individual or collections, including Toulouse-Lautrec in 1976, Boilly in 1984, Daumier in 1989, Goya in 1990, Boldini in 1991 and Pissarro in 2017.