After Théodore Gouvy, Benjamin Godard and Théodore Dubois, the Palazzetto Bru Zane continues its rediscovery of French Romantic personalities of the 1880s who – having opted neither for Wagnerism nor for the French modernism of figures like Debussy – are today regarded as academic and, for that reason, completely forgotten. Fernand de La Tombelle was one of them. Fiercely independent – yet by no means revolutionary – by temperament, he is an interesting figure in more than one respect. He frequented Grieg, Gounod, d’Indy, Massenet and Saint-Saëns (to whom he was very close) and left a substantial œuvre, protean, stylistically eclectic, even atypical, that deserves reassessment not only for its own merits, but also because it illustrates a certain form of social and artistic activity in France at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His catalogue ranges over every genre, and is complemented by photographs, drawings, paintings, and writings on theoretical and literary subjects as well as works dealing with astronomy and the culinary art (including a brief study entitled Les Pâtés de Périgueux). The whole constitutes the fruits of the work of an artist with an outstandingly wide culture, worthy of an honnête homme who also did a great deal for the musical education of the working classes.