Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904), a painter and sculptor, and Member of the Academy of Fine Arts, owned a workshop on the quays in Bougival. He used to spend many hours there during the summer months and entertained artists from the surrounding area there.

A history and genre painter and an official painter honoured during his lifetime but an enemy of the impressionists, late in life he preferred sculpture to his painted work.

In the gardens of the Town Hall, you can see, “The Fall of the Eagle”, a bronze cast which was lying in the ruins of his property on quai Boissy d’Anglas. It is similar to the order intended for the Battle of Waterloo commemorative monument.