The Musée Bonnat-Helleu is consistently rated among the best small art museums in France, and with good reason. The core of the collection is the bequest of Léon Bonnat, a Bayonne-born painter who acquired an extraordinary group of works — Rubens, Goya, El Greco, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Dürer — over his long career. The collection includes around 4,000 paintings, sculptures, drawings, and decorative arts items.
The museum also holds the collection of painter Jean-Jacques Henner, and has been expanded with modern and contemporary holdings. The building itself, a late 19th-century purpose-built museum, is handsome if slightly austere. The museum was renovated and extended in recent years. Check opening hours before visiting as these have varied. It is worth at least two hours.