The Museum of Le Mayeur

Le Mayeur Museum in Denpasar Bali

Born in Brussels, Belgium on February 9th 1880 in a high-class family, Adrian-Jean Le Mayeur got his painting talent from his parents. His latest education in architecture was achieved at Libre University. Forbidden by his father when attempted to develop his talent, he decided to leave his family by hanging around the world to seek for a right place for his talent improvement.

Le Mayeur arrived at Bali in 1932 in Singaraja City then continued a journey to Denpasar City before decided to stay in Sanur Beach. In the beginning, he just wanted to set an eight-month visit to Bali, after knowing the charm of Sanur Beach and beautiful girls of surrounding location, splashed in his mind to build a home and painting workshop in the location. A famous legong dancer named Ni Nyoman Pollok drew his heart to marry her when she became his painting model.

Unfortunately, this couple did not have any son until the end of their life. In fact, Ni Pollok was eager to have son but Le Mayeur denied it considering that she was his painting model. Le Mayeur was afraid of Ni Pollok‘s pregnancy would make her body was not beautiful anymore.

Their home and painting workshop were later on dedicated to government to be functioned as museum by his testament written in 1957. Finally, their home and painting workshop are given a name Le Mayeur Museum.

Le Mayeur is famous as impressionist and naturalist painter. Moreover, he also had tendency to paint the beauty of Balinese girls. Inside the museum, you can watch his works and historical properties such as chair, carved table, bed, wardrobe, ceramic vase, silver alliances, earthenware, and some sculptures.

At least there are 88 work arts of Le Mayeur from 1921 to 1957 showing his impressionist style. Besides using canvas, he also used other mediums for painting such as hardboard, three-ply, paper, and gunnysack. The last one was used by him remembering the difficulty of getting canvas from Belgium, so he decided to use it on the era of Japanese colonialism.

Museum of Le Mayeur Location

Le Mayeur Museum is situated in Sanur Village, Denpasar City, Bali, Indonesia. From the centre of Denpasar City, you can access the location by any public transportation like Indian taxi. Those Indian taxi will take you to the end of Hang Tuah Street then continue to the destination around 70 km away.

The museum is opened for public at 8 a.m. until 3 p.m. for Saturday to Thursday. On Friday, open from 8 to 12.30 a.m. On holidays, the museum is closed. IDR 2.000 for adult and IDR 1.000 for children. For group, more than 10 people, adult visitors only pay IDR 1.000 and IDR 500 for children. Typical foods of Bali Island can be easily found along the coast of Sanur Beach for you who are eager to taste it. Completing your visit, you can buy souvenirs around the location with reasonable price.