After burning Joan of Arc the burghers of Rouen, France, should perhaps have dealt with Marie Depeaux. This is one of the things you learn from the exhibition, A Town for Impressionism, Monet, Pissarro and Gauguin in Rouen, which features 126 paintings including 11 from Monet's Cathedral series. The 30 that make up the whole series are scattered in museums and private collections across the world, so presenting so many under one roof is an achievement in itself.
The show is being staged to coincide with the Impressionist Normandy festival and was given a budget of $3.6m, compared with $190,000 to $1.14m under normal circumstances. "Without this exceptional support we would never have been able to bring together so many masterpieces," says Laurent Salomé, the head of the Musée des Beaux Arts in Rouen.
The extra funds also paid for a landmark catalogue, which includes an explanation of why people here might bear a grudge against Mme Depeaux. It is largely due to the generosity of her husband François, a coal merchant, that the museum boasts such a fine collection of impressionist works. It became the first provincial gallery to devote a whole department to this particular school, after he donated his collection to the museum in 1909. Until recently it was widely believed that the local elders initially declined the offer. Thanks to the work of François Lespinasse, which appears in the catalogue, we now know this was not the case. On the contrary it was Marie's fault that several paintings disappeared – in particular Renoir's Bal à Bougival, which is now the pride of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
On 25 February 1903, barely three weeks after her husband had mentioned his plans to give away his paintings, she had seals placed on the doors of the family home and obtained a court order for the whole lot to be auctioned. In her defence, François was probably more faithful to his artist friends than to her. At the auction he bought back as many of the paintings as he could, then donated them to the town council.
So much for a story that confirmed the legendary stupidity of the Rouennais. To be fair, they had good cause to be misled. At the end of the 19th century the head of their new museum and art school, Edmond Lebel, called impressionism "a deplorable theory that gives young people a taste for unfinished works, with canvases which are little more than sketches, forcing the spectator to do all the work and guess what the artist may have intended".
Under his guidance, the local council stopped the scholarships it was paying to young people studying art in Paris who had been tainted by this deplorable theory. The then youthful Charles Angrand (a neo-impressionist and anarchist) caused an outrage when he refused a council bursary, preferring to make his own way.
That is the other lesson to be learned from this show, which mixes big names such as Monet, Pissarro and Gauguin with less well-known figures including Angrand, Léon-Jules Lemaître, Charles Frechon and Joseph Delattre, who founded the Rouen school. The Parisian impressionists and their provincial counterparts all enjoyed the support of Depeaux and two other Rouen collectors, Eugène Murer and Léon Monet, the painter's brother. The town was perhaps not quite as dull as some have made out.
Claude Monet sometimes visited Rouen to see his brother but his prime concern was the front of the cathedral. From a nearby hotel balcony he painted it tirelessly, under all sorts of light, from bright sun to almost complete obscurity. He produced 28 paintings of the west facade in 1892‑3, as well as two other views closer to the Cour d'Albane.
Monet also produced panoramic views of the town, taking his easel up to the Côte Sainte Catherine, the cliff overlooking Rouen. He liked the river Seine too, painting it with the cathedral in the background. Pissarro, on the other hand, concentrated on the bridges and factories. Monet was reputedly unsociable whereas Pissarro took an interest in the young painters who visited him. They included members of the Rouen school but also a former stockbroker who settled in the Norman city. His name was Paul Gauguin, but he had yet to find anyone who would buy his work.
His favourite subject matter was the leafy suburbs around Impasse Malherbe – now named after Gauguin – where he made his home with his family. We should not be blinded by his subsequent fame. Apart from a view of Rue Jouvenet, which displays remarkable subtlety in its composition, there is little here to suggest his later genius.
So were the Rouennais really such fools? Certainly not, as this exhibition demonstrates. But definitely ungrateful: a century after Depeaux's magnificent donation they have not named even an alleyway after the man Salomé describes as "the greatest philanthropist to have lived in this town".
Une Ville pour l'Impressionnisme is at Musée des Beaux Arts, Rouen, France, until 26 September
This article originally appeared in Le Monde