Works by Eugène Delacroix, Claude Monet and Vincent van Gogh were acquired in the early twentieth century under the museum’s first director, Gustav Pauli. The focus on French Romanticism, the Barbizon School and Impressionism were subsequently extended. A new area of collecting featured major works by the avant-garde group Les Nabis, including paintings by Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, Félix Vallotton, Edouard Vuillard and, recently, Paul Sérusier.

Within the scope of a research project sponsored by the Getty Foundation, Dr. Dorothee Hansen, deputy director and curator of the Kunsthalle Bremen, and Dr. Henrike Holsing have complied a scholarly inventory catalogue of the collection of nineteenth-century French painting. The objective was to review the collection in the light of the latest academic findings, updating the last comprehensive publication on nineteenth-century painting in the Kunsthalle Bremen of 1973. The study took into account the latest specialist literature as well as recent provenance research, which had not featured prominently during the 1970s. Restorers from the Kunsthalle Bremen and students of restoration from the Cologne University of Applied Sciences also examined the works in terms of their technique and present condition.

Around 170 paintings by French artists from Classicism to Cubism were examined, among them some forty works acquired over the past thirty-seven years.

Catalogue
At the re-opening of the Kunsthalle Bremen in 2011 the results of the two-year research project were presented in a comprehensive catalogue which was supported by the Ebelin and Gerd Bucerius ZEIT Foundation.

The catalogue "Vom Klassizismus zum Kubismus. Bestandskatalog der französischen Malerei in der Kunsthalle Bremen" [From Classicism to Cubism. Inventory Catalogue of French Painting in the Kunsthalle Bremen] is available at the Museum Shop.