# The donation to the Palais des Beaux-Arts

Denise Masson is a French Islamologist, born in Paris on August 5, 1901. She came from a privileged bourgeois background. Her father, Maurice Masson, was an art collector and patron from Lille. On his death, Denise Masson inherited his collection and donated it to the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lille.

Photograph of Denise Masson in 1949.
Source: Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille,
1949, via Wikicommons
CC BY-SA 4.0 license