The Permanent Collection Gallery and Lenepveu's Ceiling Sketch

The Permanent Collection Gallery displays a range of works connected to the Opéra Garnier and is divided into three areas. The first has portraits of dancers in ballet costume, striking graceful poses. The second displays portraits of opera performers and stage directors. In the third you can see materials related to the Opéra Garnier's architecture, including a portrait of Charles Garnier and the sketch for Lenepveu's ceiling painting.

That sketch is for the ceiling that decorated the theater before Chagall's The Dream Bouquet. A neoclassical work depicting the Muses of Greek mythology and the gods of time, it differs greatly from the Chagall ceiling you saw in both subject and style.

To the left of the sketch you'll notice a red wall that stands out from the others. It preserves traces of the work done when this space was being built as a smoking room. The plan was to decorate it lavishly with red walls as a smoking room, but as mentioned earlier, the emperor was deposed and construction stopped, so the wall was repainted in a different color and the space became a gallery rather than a smoking room.