Far less crowded than Versailles, far easier to organize than Champagne, far less tiresome than the D-Day Landing Zone, far less known of course, but an excellent choice of a day trip for the curious Paris revisitor—and with little to no planning required.

I’m talking about Rouen, a small city in Normandy that makes for an alluring, well-rounded walk-about, just 75-90-minutes by frequent, inexpensive train from Paris’ Saint Lazare Station.

By well-rounded I mean that Rouen offers the possibility to follow your nose, your interests and your appetite, all within a compact, walkable city center. Keep it leisurely, lilting and light, or go deep where you will. Will it be the Gothic cathedral whose façade inspired Monet? Will it be the history and the significance of Joan of Arc? Will it be the admirable fine arts museum or the handyman’s delight that is the wrought iron museum? Will it be the pastries, the ceramics shop, the half-timbered buildings, the 16th-century funerary complex, the 12th-century Jewish monument?

I wouldn’t dismiss Rouen for an overnight, or longer, but I had day trip in my mind when I chose Rouen for a city break on a mild midwinter weekday. You won’t—or shouldn’t try to—see it all in a single day, but there’s enough intriguing variety in the heart of this city of 116,000 to keep visitors of all ages, including solo travelers, engaged on a leisurely 10-12-hour excursion.

I did lots of backtracking through the day as I followed my nose and interests and appetite. And since I’d been to Rouen many times before, I didn’t look to (re)visit every sight and museum. So, while the footsteps of my day recounted below needn’t be yours, the variety of possibilities described here may well inspire your own well-rounded day trip Rouen.

Departing Paris

If you’re sure of your plans, go ahead and purchase your train ticket a few days in advance, otherwise you can likely decide the night before or even on a morning whim. Tickets are typically easy to come by since trains leave Paris’s Saint Lazare Station about every 30 minutes on weekday mornings, less frequently on weekends and holiday. Intent on making a full day of it, I took the 8:40am train, arriving in Rouen at 9:55am.

Rouen train station

On the right bank of the Seine River 85 miles from Paris, Rouen’s Rive-Droite train station is the first notable sight encountered on this day trip. Take a moment to admire it from within its great hall and from outside. Though inaugurated in 1928 during what is otherwise considered Art Deco period, the station’s pre-WWI design brought curves and arches associated with the late Art Nouveau period. Its architect, Adolphe Dervaux, designed the 1924 single-lamp streetlight that signals the entrance to many metro stations in Paris.

The Dungeon of Rouen Castle

It’s a straight 15-minute walk from the station to the historic heart of the city, down Rue Jeanne d’Arc, but I zigzagged my way there, beginning with a zig onto Rue du Donjon for a glimpse of the early-13th-century dungeon tower. The tower is the last remaining vestige of Rouen Castle. Joan of Arc was held prisoner in the castle for five months until her death sentence for heresy was carried out on May 30, 1431. As this day proceeds, you’ll be hearing more about la Pucelle, the Little Virgin, as Joan/Jeanne was called.

The Rouen Tourist Office

The Rouen Tourist Office currently occupies a niche at the corner of the Musée des Beaux Arts, the fine arts museum. Pick up a city map here and ask any planning questions to start you on your way. The museum had just opened for the day when I passed by, so that could have been my first stop, but I had breakfast in mind along with a desire to be out and about before taking in a museum on this day trip.

Maison Vatelier for morning pastries

Maison Vatelier won the title of Best Brioche in France in 1997 but isn’t resting on its laurels. The fluffy brick-size brioches certainly looked tempting, but too big for me on this solo excursion. I opted instead for a crescent shape to my buttery breakfast pastry, i.e. a croissant – an excellent one at that. Well, two actually since the kind saleswoman offered me the choice between one perfectly shaped crescent and, for the same price, two less shapely offerings. I chose the latter and saved the second for later. Given its imperfect shape, the croissant wasn’t Instagrammable, but as for taste, it was clear that Maison Vatelier knows how to work marvels with buttery morning fare! And the afternoon pastries certainly looked appetizing.

Aître St Maclou, unique funerary enclosure

It was common in the Middles Ages in France for a city to have an enclosure consisting of a common graveyard surrounded by funerary buildings and with an adjacent church. Just beyond the flamboyant radiating porch of Saint Maclou Church, Rouen’s aître or enclosed cemetery, was formerly a small parish cemetery, before being developed in the late Middle Ages into the large enclosure that can be visited today. The Black Plague, periodic famine and the Hundred Years’ War all contributed to the need for the expanded burial complex. Once the buried bodies of the defunct in one section had decomposed, the bones would be dug up and placed in the surrounding buildings called charnel houses. Though no longer used for burials or skeletal storage, Aître St Maclou is one of the few remaining former funerary enclosures of its kind in France.

The centuries-old spirit of the setting can be seen in the skulls, ditchdigger tools and dance macabre that decorate the wood beams and columns. The dance macabre, in which skeletons dance hand in hand with citizens of all walks of life, was a common decoration of such complexes, a reminder that our earthly party will one day end. But while we’re here… party on, especially during the Macabre Festival that’s held here for two weeks in late October/early November—that’s Halloween season for us. Goths take note.

Audio-guided and group tours of the site are available, but you can also visit on your own. Entrance to the courtyard is free. By the entrance, there’s an attractive café and restaurant named Hamlet https://www.cafe-hamlet.fr/ (“Alas, poor York…”).

One wing of the complex is occupied by the non-profit pottery workshop and ceramics shop, La Galerie des Arts du Feu www.galeriedesartsdufeu.fr. Looking for original gifts or decorative items for your own home? The shop presents attractive work from Norman artists. Some works in glass and metal are also presented here.

Musée des Beaux Arts de Rouen

Many cities throughout France have worthy fine arts museums, notable not only for their collections but for the beaux-art building themselves and the lack of crowds most days—certainly off-season. No Louvre lines here, particularly on weekdays. Entrance to Rouen’s Musée des Beaux-Arts is free, except for temporary exhibitions. (The museum is closed on Tuesday.)

Artists, students of art history and casual visitors alike will appreciate the elbow room with which to examine works, whether taking to the museum’s stately halls and rooms for 45 minutes or two hours. The casual visitor—me, for example—can take in a sweeping view of European art from the 15th century on, rushing by eras that speak less to you and slowing down in those that speak more, with the occasional eye-stopping, pondering pause along the way. For example, at the spooky-eyed scene called The Virgin among the Virgins by Gerard David (c. 1509); Diego Valasquez’s Democritus showing the viewer the boozy, ironic smile of a vagabond philosopher (c. 1630), or a wonderful self-portrait by Eugène Delacroix at about 18 (c. 1816).

Then there’s the museum’s impressive Impressionist and post-Impressionist collection thanks to the Seine Valley’s prominent place in the development of the art movement and to the donation of dozens of works by Francois Depeaux, a local industrialist and art collector of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The museum holds only one of Monet’s extraordinarily vibrant series of paintings of Rouen Cathedral. The one here, painted on a grey day, isn’t very pulsating on its own, yet it remains a centerpiece of the museum’s collection. More on that series when we get to the cathedral. Monet’s General View of Rouen is also in the permanent collection.

The current temporary exhibition at the museum, In the Rain: Painting, Living and Dreaming, focuses on the painting of rain and rainy scenes. Showing until September 20, 2026, entrance to the exhibition costs 12€, free for those under 18.

I was visiting the museum on an exceptionally calm day when it was possible to sit quietly in the museum’s atrium café and take part in the endearing scene of the image below. A fellow in the painting leaned out from the left to look wearily back—weary from drink, sun and a brother’s speech.

Lunch at In Situ

A leisurely day trip—along with the painting above—invites a leisurely lunch, even if a working lunch, as mine was when I met here with an official from the tourist office.

Across the street from the Beaux-Arts Museum, the brasserie In Situ looked rather ordinary from the outside, since no tables were out there during my January day trip. The spacious interior exuded no Old-World charm either, but we’d come to the right place for a tasty, congenial, inexpensive lunch. Owner-chef Laurent Blanchard is a passionate culinary raconteur of traditional bistro fare made personal. We tasted it on the plate and later heard it in his childhood memories of our main courses, a cassoulet and a shredded duck parmentier. And just look at his contagious smile here. We sensed that in each dish as well. Several doors down the wide alley, his wife Patricia prooses the simpler lunchtime and take-out dishes at In Fine. Both are closed on Sunday.

As noted earlier, I’m not asking you to follow in my precise footsteps on your day in Rouen. There are numerous appetizing and inviting lunch options in the city center. As to well-known restaurants, La Couronne, which dates itself to 1345 and claims to be the oldest existing inn in France, often appears on the list of American gastronomes. It was here that Julia Child experienced her culinary awakening regarding the pleasures of traditional, hearty French cuisine. L’Odas, by the cathedral, sports a Michelin star for those looking for a more prolonged and refined meal. Not to discourage anyone from a meal at either, but as much as I enjoy a leisurely lunch on a day trip, I’d rather not spend the afternoon over a meal—unless, of course, the meal is the purpose of the day trip. Numerous other pleasing options can be found in the city center without advance planning.

Musée Le Secq des Tournelles, the wrought iron museum

Wrought—the very word appeals to me for the way it fuses together notions of ornamentation, hammering, manufacturing and stirred emotions. Add iron to that and you get a wide array of decorative and practical objects at once heavy, intricate and refined. Gather together a collection of them (as a certain Le Secq and his son did in the 19th century) and place them in a Gothic former church, and you get the makings of one of my favorite sites in Rouen, a handyman’s delight, its wrought iron museum. Entrance is free. Open 2-6pm, closed Tuesday.

The Sublime House

“May this house be sublime…” That’s one of many Biblical, along with non-Biblical, inscriptions and graffiti in Hebrew on this exceptional and unique site, dated to around the year 1100.

After centuries of burial, it was rediscovered in 1976 during the final phase of restauration of the Palais de Justice (courthouse complex), when the complex’s courtyard was being prepared for repaving. A track shovel hit on something hard that turned out to be a mysterious building from the time that the level of the city in this area was about eight feet below today’s courtyard.

The area is known to have been the Jewish quarter prior to the expulsion of Jews from France in 1306, when Jewish property was confiscated. And the name of the street running alongside the courtyard is Rue aux Juifs or Jewish Street/Street of the Jews. Those were already indications that the discovered building had been Jewish-owned, but confirmation came only with the discovery during the excavation of the inscriptions in Hebrew.

Nearly all Jewish-owned buildings from the Middle Ages were destroyed in Europe as Jews were expelled from one kingdom and region after another, making this a unique archeological find. This is the oldest known building belonging to Jews in France and among the oldest in Western Europe. Jews were expelled from France by order of King Philippe le Bel in 1306. In 1307 the city purchased confiscated property from the king. The upper floors of the structure were then torn down in 15th or 16th centuries, at the latest in 1550, when the neighboring building of what was then Parliament of Normandy was extended, forming what is now the courthouse complex.

Evidence of a fire on one side of the Sublime House likely dates to 1116 when a fire tore through the Jewish neighborhood. That helped hone in on the date of construction to about 1100, a particularly rich period for Normandy, including for Norman Jews, following the conquest of England in 1066 by William, Duke of Normandy. The building was presumably in use for two centuries, until the expulsion of Jews from Rouen.

Hebrew inscriptions on its walls clearly indicate that this was a Jewish-owned building, but of what sort? A mystery remains as to the actual purpose of the Sublime House. One hypothesis is that it served as a yeshiva or Jewish institute of learning. Another, that it was a synagogue. And it may have been the home of a wealthy merchant, perhaps one who had made his fortune during the Norman Conquest, before bequeathing it to become a synagogue and/or a yeshiva.

Subsequent to the excavation of the Sublime House, other remnants of the neighborhood from the same era have been discovered nearby. A more detailed summary of the Sublime House can be read here.

I’d visited the Sublime House on a previous visit to Rouen, so I didn’t include it in my day trip this time. I’d had the honor of visiting with Jacques Tanguy, a historian specialized in Rouen who was present during the original excavation. Descending into the ruin requires advance planning since the site is generally only opened on Saturday for a up to 18 visitors for 1-hour guided tours at 10:30am and 2:30pm. Additional tours are possible on Tuesday and Thursdays at 2:30pm during French school vacations. The tour is in French only, though group visits in English may be possible upon request. For those who are interested in the site, it’s worthwhile descending beneath the courtyard and going inside the building even without understanding the full tour in French. See here for details about making a reservation.

Viewing the courthouse complex by walking around its perimeter is itself worthwhile. Evidence of the impacts of bombs from WWII can be seen as permanent scars on the building, particularly on the northwestern corner that faces Place Foch.

Notre-Dame Cathedral

Rouen’s Notre-Dame is not the country’s most beautiful, impressive or photogenic, yet Monet found it worth transcribing numerous times onto canvas in 1892 and 1893, and that is part of its claim to fame today.

See the website of the diocese of Rouen for a glimpse of 28 paintings Monet made of the façade, arranged by the time of day that each represents, along with much other information about the cathedral.

Monet, who spent most of his life in Normandy and whose brother lived in Rouen, would visit the town from his home in Giverny, 37 miles away. Here, he would set up his easel at several spots on the second floor of the buildings across the square. He would then finish his Rouen Cathedral paintings in his studio back home.

Viewing several of these paintings together, as at the Orsay Museum in Paris, is the best way to understand the connection between Monet’s eye, hand and palate. As noted earlier, only one of the series, painted on a grey day, is in Rouen’s Beaux-Arts Museum.

Yet today’s façade is not exactly as Monet saw it. Construction of the Gothic cathedral that more or less exists today was begun after a fire in 1200 destroyed an earlier edifice of the 10th and 11th century. The cathedral was subsequently scarred or ravaged at various times over the centuries, by civil unrest, lightning and war. The main damage that has intervened since Monet’s time is that of Allied bombing in the spring of 1944. Those bombing raids took place in preparation for the D-Day Landings. Looking to the right when facing the cathedral’s façade, you’ll notice post-war buildings. They reflect reconstruction of the section of the city along and near the river (just a few blocks away in that direction) that was irreparably damaged during those bombings, whose primary intent was to destroy docks and infrastructure in the area. The colorful array of half-timbered buildings in other parts of center city, particularly when walking behind the cathedral, attest to the fact the bombing was relatively focused along the river.

Joan of Arc – Historial Jeanne d’Arc

Born in northeastern France in 1412, Jeanne d’Arc / Joan of Arc accomplished and accompanied much during her brief time of living fame. Barely one year into her task of restoring France and its king to rightful power, she was captured, sold to the English, tried by the Church for heresy and burned at the stake in Rouen on May 30, 1431. Rehabilitated by the Church in 1456 (many of the players of her original trial were still alive), beatified in 1909, canonized in 1920, the Catholic Church places Joan, along the Teresa of Lisieux, just one rung below Mary in national patron sainthood.

Joan—la Pucelle or Little Virgin—is a major historical figure associated with Rouen and France as a whole. While admired by Catholics, her place in French history extends beyond her halo.

I’m a bit disturbed by this Joan of Arc business. The city that watched her burn, with toothless glee or awe or fascination, I imagine, now proudly uses her for promotional purposes. A visitor can dedicate a day to Joan alone. We can see where she was held prisoner, where she was judged, where she was burned, where her ashes were thrown into the river to prevent a cult from forming around them. Businesses and a candy bear her name.

Yet, it is a great story! I can understand spending a day learning it. Much about the gal is verifiable fact. And once you start learning about “the little virgin” and her brief appearance on the stage of France during the Hundred Years’ War with the English, you’re forced to wonder about how the stories—symbolic, actual, political, religious—of a single life persist in time when the stars align.

The Historial Jeanne d’Arc is an excellent place to start. It’s located just behind the cathedral in the episcopal palace that was the site of the trial that condemned her to be death as a heretic and the site of portions of the trial that rehabilitated her good name. Visitors walk through rooms viewing videos and holograms of various participants in the trials as they tell her story. The audio in your headset can be set to play in English. The Historial lays the foundation for understanding why Joan has gone down in French and Catholic history as the woman who victoriously led French troops against English invaders, gave courage to a diminished king, and was instrumental in turning the tide of the Hundred Years’ War—and, equally importantly, how her story has been used and reinterpreted for political purposes over the past two hundred years.

Time slots at the Historial can fill, particularly on weekends and in heavier tourist seasons, so you may wish to reserve in a day or two in advance. Or come by the morning of your day trip to reserve a slot for later in the day. Open 10am-7pm, closed Monday. A virtual visit of the site can be viewed here.

Rue du Gros Horloge – Big Clock Street

The commercial street leading from the cathedral to Place du Vieux Marché, site of Jean’s public execution, passes beneath the Grosse Horloge, the Big Clock. (The clock tower can be visited, with a panoramic view at the top.) Beyond it, chocolate specialist Auzou presents its sweet and crunchy creation of 1992 called the Larmes de Jeanne d’Arc, Jeanne of Arc’s tears. Auzou’s tears are grilled and caramelized almonds that have been given a thin ganache coating and finished with powdered chocolate. I bought some as a gift while saving my own appetite for afternoon sweetness for a pastry shop on the square.

Place du Vieux Marché – The Old Market Square

The charm of this market square was squandered in the 1970s with the construction of Saint Joan of Arc Church at its center. Then again, if you imagine it as a sea dragon lurking by the smoking site of Jeanne’s martyrdom, it can be thought-provoking.

I don’t know if the 16th-century church that stood on the square prior to the bombing of May 1944 was more appealing, but you may want to enter Saint Joan of Arc Church to see some of the stained glass of that former church that was presciently removed at the start of the war. Another highlight on the square, particularly for foodie Americans, is La Couronne, which calls itself the oldest inn in France (1345). It’s there that Julia Child claimed to have had the culinary epiphany that led her to becoming the high priestess of French cuisine in the United States.

As I say, I’d been to Rouen many times before and knew what to expect, so neither the church nor La Couronne held my interest. What did was a mirliton, a traditional pastry from Rouen that’s been around for centuries. It was especially for a mirliton that I’d come to the square. Specifically, to Christrophe Cressent’s Ma Boulangerie. (Closed Monday.)

A mirliton is made of egg, butter, sugar, almond powder and vanilla in a thin puff pastry, so what’s not to like? Christophe Cressent also makes an apple version. I bought the plain version with the intent of enjoying it in a nearby café, but by the time I checked out the nearby food market by the church I’d finished my mirliton. Good thing I got this beauty shot before going too far.

Though the pastry was gone, it was coffee, tea, perhaps wine time. When on an excursion, finding the right sat in the right setting is more important to me than the drink itself. I lucked upon the window seat at the cozy brasserie Mamie on the square. It was a fine seat from which to while away an hour and write up my excursion notes.

Final steps

The midwinter sun had long set by the time I returned to the cobblestones. I could see calling it a Rouen day at that point then making my way back to the station for the 6pm or 7pm train and returning to Paris at a reasonable time for dinner. But even in winter I don’t like to rush at the end of a city excursion. There’s always another café, bar, bistro or brasserie to stop into, or, weather permitting, a garden or park or riverside to visit.

I pursued my leisurely zigzagging in the town center. I looked in as some of the wine and cocktails bars in the Antique Dealers’ Quarter. Eventually, I made my way to the station area 45 minutes in advance of the 8:02pm train. It was inadvertently perfect timing for a pre-train glass of Normandy hard cider at Le Metropole (111 rue Jeanne d’Arc), a 1930 café-bar 100 yards from the station. Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir would meet here in the 1930s, early in their couplehood. She was teaching at a high school in Rouen, he at a high school in Le Havre.

Return to Paris: So I took the 8:02, arriving in Paris at 9:20pm. I’d picked up an apple from a small grocer passed on the way to the station. I still had my misshapen gift croissant from the morning. They would suffice for dinner. Or might have had I not also opened the bag of Joan’s tears that I’d intended as a gift. And they were gift—as gift, as had been the entire day, to myself.

Thus ends a day trip to Rouen—mine, not necessarily yours. I leave it to you to create your own well-rounded, informative, tasty Rouen city-center walk-about. Or to join me on another one.

© 2026, Gary Lee Kraut

The post Rouen, Normandy: An Alluring, Well-Rounded Day Trip from Paris appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

On a far more intimate scale, the Clos Lucé in Amboise, a charming brick chateau in the Loire Valley, also made the cut. Though called a chateau, the Clos Lucé more resembles a large manor, and its magic is less about royal high-rollers than the Italian commoner who resided on the grounds for three short years: Leonardo da Vinci.

With three paintings in his luggage—Mona Lisa, St. Anne and John the Baptist—Leonardo da Vinci made the long and arduous journey across the Alps to Amboise via mule-train and riverboat in 1516 at the well-paid request of King François I, his last noble patron.

While Leonardo’s French dwelling has been open to the public since the 1950s, its displays have changed and expanded over the decades, and a free-standing, immersive gallery inaugurated on the grounds in June 2021 now makes the Clos Lucé an even more enticing place the understand the genius of Leonardo (Léonard in French). It includes 21st-century high-tech gizmos that the Renaissance man himself would undoubtedly have appreciated.

The Clos Lucé is a 10-minute walk from the sprawling clifftop Château d’Amboise, that has dominated the town and the Loire River for over 800 years, where eventual King François (Francis) I grew up. Shortly after his coronation in 1515, France embarked on string of military victories on the Italian peninsula, the latest in a series of incursions there. Though they failed to secure for France the control and influence that it long sought in Italy, they did lead the king to appreciate Italian culture and to a meeting with the great Renaissance man himself. An art lover and an artist groupie, François I installed his famous Florentine guest near Amboise Castle in what was then known as the Manoir du Cloux, a 15th century turreted pink brick mansion that would later come to be called the Château du Clos Lucé. An underground passage, since filled in, linked the two properties for private king-to-genius visits.

The Cloux-cum-Clos is also associated with an earlier relationship between a royal and a commoner, that of Louis XI and a kitchen boy named Etienne Le Loup. Legend holds that one fine day in 1471 the king ventured into the royal pantry and asked the teen how much he was paid. Etienne replied “as much as the king,” leading Louis to inquire how much he thought the king earned. “As much as he needs, just like me.” The king was so charmed by this response that he gave the kid a title and the Clos Lucé holding. Etienne then expanded the manor on the site, making it much the way it appears today from the outside. Whatever the true reason for the king’s generosity, Etienne, in 1490, sold the property back to the crown, then on the head of Louis’s successor, who transformed portions of the interior (a royal chapel was added). The stage was soon sent for the property to serve as the royal guest house for da Vinci.

A Da Vinci Theme Park

Since 1855, the Clos Lucé estate has been owned by the Saint Bris family. While his parents opened the grounds to the public in 1954, it’s the current landlord, François Saint Bris, who has sprinkled the pixie dust of Leonardo’s genius throughout the property.

“Genius” is notoriously difficult to convey to a large audience. But Leonardo’s brilliance as an artist, architect, inventor, engineer and urbanist is demonstrated by actual things that can be seen, touched or used: Mona Lisa in the Louvre, the Escher-esque spiral staircase that’s primarily attributed to him at Chambord, and here at the Clos Lucé many models and visionary images to amaze and delight visitors of all ages: swiveling bridges, helicopters, automobiles, bat-winged gliders, ideal cities, urban sewage systems, theatrical spectacles and, alas, armored tanks and machine guns.

Growing up on the property, François Saint Bris wasn’t immediately drawn in by the da Vinci mystique. As a child, he says, adult discussions of “le grand Léonard” sounded like “le grand renard” (the giant fox), which was more interesting to him than “a guy called Leonard.” Clearly, he has come around as he has increasingly turned the Clos Lucé into a da Vinci theme park, with further projects on the drawing board.

The new Leonardo da Vinci Galleries form an immersive playground that recreates—though some sleight-of-hand tech from IBM, Dassault Aeronautics and the numeric architecture firm Arc-en-Scène—da Vinci’s most fantastic accomplishments. Geared to delight both children and adults, the new invention and architecture spaces, housed in a freshly renovated 19th-century factory on the property, expand on the already extensive simulations that visitors could see at the main abode of the Clos Lucé. They’re filled with 3-D models and videos, including games that simulate Leonardo’s gliders flying over the Loire, while his art is honored in a virtual and musical montage with 200 images dissolving and evolving across the walls.

And it doesn’t stop there. The extensive gardens, echoing the flowers and foliage depicted in Leonardo’s paintings, are punctuated by scale models of the inventor’s innovative bridges and computer-generated images. In the chateau/manor itself, visitors can see a reconstitution of Leonardo’s bedroom, a reconstruction of his studio, the oratory frescoes that Charles VIII commissioned for his wife Anne de Bretagne, and a life-size, walking-talking hologram of Leonardo chatting about art with the Cardinal of Aragon.

Amboise Castle and Da Vinci DNA

No “Homage to Leonardo” tour would be complete without a visit to the Château d’Amboise, in whichever order you choose to visit them. While the castle housed over a dozen kings and a plethora of dukes over the ages, it also held unwilling guests. D’Artagnan escorted the flashy financier Nicolas Fouquet of Vaux-le-Vicomte fame, to the grounds after Louis XIV accused him of embezzlement and before he was sent to a more distant and damning prison. The Emir Abd El Kader (1808-1883), leader of the Algerian resistance, was a prisoner of state at Amboise, along with his family and an entourage of 83, from 1848 until liberated by Louis Napoléon Bonaparte in 1852. There’s a statue to his memory in the castle’s park.

Inside the castle, one can see a sentimental yet historically inaccurate vision of Leonardo’s death in the arms of François I that was painted by François-Guillaume Ménageot in 1781. While the two men were indeed on very friendly terms, the king was in Saint-Germain-en-Laye when Leonardo died at the Clos Lucé.

There’s greater mystery connected with Leonardo’s final resting place. On his deathbed, the artist asked to be buried in the royal chapel in the gardens of Amboise castle, and this request was granted. However, that chapel was destroyed during the Revolution—a statue of Leonardo in the garden marks the chapel’s former location—but at the time no one was overly concerned with the graves on the site.

Leonardo’s lily-bedecked tomb was moved to another chapel at the castle site, Chapelle de Saint Hubert, a small, freestanding Flamboyant Gothic edifice, decorated with antlers because Hubert is the patron saint of hunters.

But is Leonardo da Vinci really buried there?

It wasn’t until 1863, when historian Arsène Houssaye started poking through the debris, that a coffin and some coins minted during François I’s reign were discovered and nearby remains were designated as da Vinci’s.

This has engendered countless, Dan Brownish discussions over the years along on the lines of “was the body now entombed in the current Amboise grave left-handed like Leonardo?” Advances in DNA research—and the da Vincimania that accompanied the 500-year commemorations of his death in 2019 (when the Clos Lucé drew a record 520,000 visitors)—sparked an international fire-storm of interest in the genetic heritage of the remains in the tomb.

Leonardo’s DNA has proved elusive. He apparently had no direct offspring yet his extremely prolific father, a Florentine notary, spawned double-digit half-siblings for the artist.  Samples from the remains in the Amboise vault have been sent to several DNA labs, but there’s been no definitive answer as yet. For the moment, Leonardo’s chromosomes are still as enigmatic as Mona Lisa’s smile.

Practical information

Though more likely visited during extended explorations in the Loire Valley, Amboise can be the object of a carefully-timed day trip from Paris. Trains from Paris’s Austerlitz and Montparnasse stations take between an hour and a half and two hours. The Clos Lucé and the Château d’Amboise are just over a mile from the train station. A shuttle bus links the train station with the center of town.

Parking for cars and bicycles is also available in proximity of those sights. There are three public parking lots in Amboise within walking distance of the chateau, along with a designated Clos Lucé lot.

There are two restaurants on the Clos Lucé grounds: La Terrasse Renaissance (salads and crepes) and La Table du Moulin (grilled meat, salads and take-away sandwiches), to be enjoyed on shaded picnic tables. A third restaurant, L’Auberge du Prieuré, specializing in Renaissance-style fare and wines spiked with herbs and honey, is open for groups of 15 or more, reservations required. Picnics are also permitted on the grounds of the Château d’Amboise, which has an on-site café. There are also many cafés and eateries in the stroll-worthy town Amboise, though the primary points of interest are the castle and the Clos Lucé.

Château du Clos-Lucé – Parc Leonardo da Vinci, 2 rue du Clos Lucé, Amboise. Closed December 25 and January 1.

Château d’Amboise/Amboise Castle, Montée de l’Emir Abd El Kader, Amboise. Closed December 25 and January 1.

© 2022, Corinne LaBalme

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Corinne LaBalme saw only the dark side of Pierre Soulages, France’s most celebrated living artist, until she visited his namesake museum in Rodez, Aveyron, and saw the light.

Pierre Soulages is the rare artist who’s been able to attend his own centenary celebrations. Born in 1919, he’s been prolific enough to have filled countless retrospectives around the world last year. But age alone doesn’t explain why prices for his work have reached dizzying heights, as his work entitled “200 x 166 cm 14 mars 1960,” which sold for 9.6 million euros (about 10.5 million dollars) in November 2019. (When it comes to Soulages titles it’s just the facts: size and date completed.) There is something extraordinary about his work, though I didn’t realize it until I visited his namesake museum in Rodez, his birthplace in the Aveyron department of central southern France.

Soulages is best known for working within the realm of outrenoir, which is often translated in English as “ultra-black” or “beyond black.” He coined the word in 1979 to describe paintings that he coated in thick black pigment before meticulously raking them into shape with masonry tools generally used on grout and mortar.

“The vehicle is light, not black,” the artist has explained numerous times. “Black is a violent color, it imposes itself, it dominates, it’s the original color.”

Nevertheless, his Darth Vader-ish canvases never imposed themselves on me. While they were instantly recognizable in contemporary art exhibits, my own magpie attention was always diverted by the turquoise Hockney swimming pools or the neon Warhols that flanked them. Once you’ve seen one big Soulages, you’ve seen them all, I thought.

Wrong.

It took a press trip to Rodez, a town so isolated in the volcanic plateaux of central France that the “fast” trains from Paris take seven hours to get there, to alter my perception of Soulages’ outrenoir. Seeing mass quantities of his paintings in a building that was purpose-built to show them off can be a mind-bending, magical and quasi-religious experience—my Come-to-Gesso experience.

In 2005, Soulages donated 500 of his works to the municipality of Rodez. (He now resides in Sète, the nearest Mediterranean town to Rodez.) Until the completion of the museum in 2014, Rodez’s sole main architectural claim to fame was its red sandstone Notre-Dame Cathedral (1276-1531). The museum, designed by the Catalan architectural firm of RCR, now also holds a claim. It consists of five slightly tippy parallelepiped boxes set in a 7.4-acre garden in the center of town. Its rusty Corton steel façade echoes the red sandstone of the Gothic cathedral that stands 600 yards away. (In 2017 the firm won the Pritzker Architecture Prize.)

As the artist has repeatedly told interviewers, his outrenoir painting are all about the light. Yet when I’ve seen his work in group shows, the industrial lumens that make Motherwells and Pollocks sparkle and shine left Soulages looking like the designated driver at the art party. Soulages painting don’t photograph well either. They need to be experienced in motion i.e. the motion of the viewer.

The cavernous museum in Rodez, with its darkened rooms and large windows, allows the paintings to come alive while revealing their secrets. A canvas that appears from one angle to be somber as a moonless night in an urban blackout will from another angle burst into an array of molten golden shimmers.

It’s hard to say more about the outrenoir gold seam. It’s about as close to alchemy as anything yet seen on earth and thus, it has to be seen to be believed. His giant canvases with black motifs on a white field photograph much better but it’s only “in person” that you can detect the tiny splotches of dark paint which could have been easily whited out. People often compare these paintings to Chinese calligraphy, a simile that the artist has denied, yet there is a certain Eastern “drips happen” serenity of these paintings.

For a 100-year-old artist who’s been top of his game for decades, Soulages’ personal bio is surprisingly slim and uneventful. No escapades in Tahiti, no (recorded) drunken revels, no Picasso-esque psycho-drama. Soulages has even stayed married to the same woman, Colette Llaurens, since 1940! That means an 80th wedding anniversary this year, an accomplishment in itself.

Soulages’ instant success and seamless speed towards super-stardom leads me to think of him as the anti-Van Gogh. As a journalist who has had an achingly hard time trying to get a first novel published, 80 years of success is irritatingly hard to fathom. Accepted into Paris’s prestigious Ecoles des Beaux Arts in 1937, Soulages dropped out before day one after deciding that art school had nothing to teach him. After WWII, he was rejected from one salon (count it: one) and then became the undisputed star of his next group show in 1947. By the early 1950s, he’d exhibited in the Guggenheim, the Tate, MOMA, the Phillips in Washington, as well as museums and galleries in Rio, Copenhagen, Paris, etc., and the honors and recognition never stopped.

Even though painters naturally prefer pigment to prose, Pierre Soulages is more cryptic than most. When asked about his outrenoir oeuvre in the December 2019 issue of Connaissance des Arts magazine, he replied: Le mot outrenoir permet de ne pas se limiter au phénomene optique car voir les reflets sur une surface noir, c’est un phénomene optique. (The word outrenoir makes it possible to not limit oneself to the optical phenomenon because seeing the reflections on a black surface is an optical phenomenon.)

While maddeningly opaque in both French and English, this response would make perfect sense on Dagobah: Black see you not, Luke Skywalker. Light it must have to reveal the Force.

The events of 2020 have made the world seem like one huge black hole. Is there no better time to embrace the dark and find the light that lies within it? Pierre Soulages may not be the original Jedi Knight, but his artwork is certainly what I need right now.

Musée Pierre Soulages. Jardin du Foirail, avenue Victor Hugo, 12000 Rodez. Tel: 05 65 73 82 60. Hours: 9 am to 9 pm. Closed Monday. July and August: Open 7 days. Café Michel Bras on premises.

Note: The museum re-opened after Corona lockdown on May 21st. Masks will be obligatory until further notice. Through October 31, the museum will present a temporary exhibition entitled Femmes Années 50 that showcases the abstract works of Sonia Delaunay, Joan Mitchell, Geneviève Asse, Pierrette Bloch, Shirley Goldfarb and others.

© 2020, Corinne LaBalme for France Revisited

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The sculpture by American artist Jeff Koons is intended as “a symbol of remembrance and support” from the American people to the people of Paris and more largely France in memory of the victims of the terrorist attacks in Paris in 2015.

It’s comprised of a well-manicured Caucasian hand holding eleven marshmallow-like tulips, with the twelfth representing through its absence victims of the attacks.

Standing 41 feet high, including its base of limestone quarried from the Paris region, the polychrome bronze, stainless steel and aluminum Bouquet of Tulips is sufficiently hidden behind the Petit Palais in the gardens of the Champs-Elysées to be ignored yet colorful enough to be photogenic.

Funded through private donations in collaboration with the Fonds pour Paris – Paris Foundation for placement on public space, the original price tag of 3.5 million euros was surpassed.

As Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo noted in her speech, Parisians love a good debate about placing a new work of art or architecture in a public space. She failed to note that honoring victims of terrorism with eleven Koons tulips is too much like honoring victims of famine with a statue of Ronald McDonald with one French fry missing.

Also speaking at the inauguration were Jeanne d’Hauteserre, mayor of the 8th arrondissement, which covers the Champs-Elysées; Koons; Jane Hartley, U.S. Ambassador to France from 2014 to 2017, who initiated the project, and Jamie McCourt, current U.S. Ambassador to France.

Ambassador McCourt, a Trump appointee, won the battle of the blonde ambassadors by reading her text in well-spoken French, whereas former ambassador Hartley, an Obama appointee, smiled her way through a text in English despite having lived in Paris for 2½ years, professing this her favorite city (“don’t tell my friends in New York”), and practically calling Mayor Hidalgo her BFF. Score one for the current ambassador, though one can’t imagine a Trump appointee raising funds in the name of French-American friendship, so take that back.

Nevertheless, while the work of American ambassadors around the world is in English and we can’t expect them to be fluent in the language of their host country, you’d think that after a couple of years with her BFF in Paris Hartley would have been able to fake her way in the language of Lafayette enough to read a 3-minute fluff speech of the kind that she gave dozens of times during her tenure.

No one expected Koons to speak French—and he doesn’t. But he does see himself in line with Picasso, Monet, Boucher and Fragonard in their use of flowers in art. Art historians take note.

Text and photos © 2019, Gary Lee Kraut.

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The opening this year of the Camille Claudel Museum in Nogent sur Seine, 65 miles southeast of Paris, not only brings the sculptor out of the shadows of her teacher, lover and nemesis Auguste Rodin, it also shines light on Claudel’s work as a talented and innovative sculptor of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in her own right.

In an interview with Janet Hulstrand for France Revisited, Camille Claudel’s great-niece, Reine-Marie Paris, one of the driving forces behind the museum’s creation, explains how she came to appreciate Camille Claudel’s work and to understand the mental illness that caused her to destroy much of her own work and led to her eventual confinement in a series of psychiatric institutions, where she spent the last 30 years of her life.

Reine-Marie Paris is an art historian and the author of a number of books on the life and work of Camille Claudel (1864-1943).

This original interview, conducted in French, has been translated by Janet Hulstrand.

Janet Hulstrand: When did you first learn that your great-aunt was a famous artist? Or was she not really so famous when you learned about her for the first time? What did you learn about Camille Claudel, growing up in your family?

Reine-Marie Paris: My first encounter with Camille Claudel, my great-aunt, was, you might say, somewhat accidental. In fact, until I was a married woman no one in the Claudel family—my grandparents, my uncles and aunts, my mother, no one ever mentioned her in front of me. Later I understood that the subject was taboo, because bringing it up might reignite an old argument about her internment in a psychiatric asylum, which was considered abusive.

My earliest memory of her work goes back to when I was 10 years old. I was returning from a swimming lesson not far from the home of my grandfather, Paul Claudel, on the Blvd. Lannes, and I stopped to visit my grandmother. There, on the chest where she had put the cookies for my treat, was La Petite Chatelaine in bronze. I couldn’t take my gaze away from this little girl, who seemed to me to be lost, facing the mysteries of life.

My curiosity about the artist who had created this sculpture wasn’t awakened until much later, when a dealer specializing in Art Nouveau objects asked me if I would be interested in acquiring some of the work of Camille Claudel. From that day on, I have never stopped being interested in her life and work. Is it because of familial devotion? It’s not only that. The objects I bought from the dealer seemed to me to express a kind of beautiful melancholy. I decided to plunge in blindly and to learn whatever I could about the personality of this great artist, who was so little known.

JH: When and why did you decide to study the work of Camille Claudel and to learn about her life?

RMP: Once again, it was by chance. I encountered the historian Jacques Cassar who, in his pioneering work, had come across the name of Camille Claudel while doing research on Paul Claudel. It was he who put me on my path of exploration and gave me my first questions to research. His first work on Camille Claudel should have been signed by the two of us, but he died, putting an end to our joint efforts.

Initially my work consisted of putting together documents I found scattered among the innermost depths of libraries, museums, family archives, psychiatric hospitals. I was able to read Camille’s letters, so filled with terrible suffering. I was also given permission to consult her medical records, and I was able to feel, almost physically, her pain, a pain without hope of healing—30 years with no visitors except those of her brother Paul, and two visits from her English friend Jessie Lipscomb. In a word, a living hell.

JH: The story of Camille Claudel’s life is very dramatic, even tragic. There is also some controversy as to the way her life unfolded, who was responsible for what happened to her. There have been accusations leveled against Auguste Rodin, and also against your grandfather, her brother, Paul Claudel. Knowing what you know about her life, both as a member of the Claudel family and as a historian who has dedicated many years to learning about her life and her art, what would you like people to know about her? What misunderstandings or false ideas would you like to have corrected?

RMP: Who was responsible for her situation? It’s a good question. Was it her family? Her brother? Society? Rodin?

Camille is considered to be an artiste maudite. Her work gives evidence of the drama she lived. From the age of eight, she sculpted her dreams, and her heroes—Bismarck, Napoleon. She was drawn to them because of their strong character and because of the powerful feelings they inspired. As her mother’s least-loved child, she enclosed herself in a shell to defend herself, to allow herself to escape into a life in which she could fight the injustice of which she saw herself as a victim.

Her father, Louis-Prosper, protected her for as long as he was alive: he paid her rent, her expenses, collected unpaid invoices for the work she sold, in short, he did what he could, all the while treating her as a raving madwoman. Her mother preferred her sister Louise, who was destined to lead an ordinary life as a wife and mother. And Louise resented her.

Her brother Paul’s feelings for her oscillated between admiration and repulsion. As a child he was fascinated by this older sister, so beautiful, so intelligent, so authoritarian that he couldn’t escape the orders she was always giving him: he would pose for her for hours, bring her the clay she needed for modeling, and if ever he balked at her commands, there were endless battles. And yet, he loved the escapades they had together at a place called “Le Geyn” a sort of rocky promontory that reminded him of Wuthering Heights.

For Paul, Camille was his first image of woman, his model of femininity, “the promise that can’t be kept.” For Paul Claudel, as for Baudelaire, “all loved ones are vessels of bile that one drinks with closed eyes.” When he discovered that Camille had betrayed him in a sense, by becoming Rodin’s mistress, and especially after she admitted to having had an abortion, which he considered the worst of crimes, he rejected her as if she were diseased. He would portray her in his play La jeune fille Victorine as Victorine-Camille, a lepress. To a journalist he once said, “Oh, my sister Camille, that’s a subject that it’s difficult for me to talk about: the pain, the spectacle of this magnificent personality, and the failure that condemned her.” Later he would speak of her with remorse, and regret for not having done everything for her that he could have done. But for him, the main one responsible for Camille’s fate was Rodin. Rodin took everything from her: she gave him everything and got back nothing. I think so too. In return for all she gave, all she got was misery, poverty, solitude, despair–and in the end, 30 years in the obscurity of a psychiatric asylum.

Was it society? Camille was born too soon. In our day she would have known success as a woman and as an artist. Nevertheless, in her day, among her peers she was recognized and admired. Some critics referred to the “glow” of her genius, others simply said that she was a genius, Octave Mirabeau for example. He was indignant after having admired her Causeuses at the Salon. “And who is not left on their knees before such an artist?“ he asked. “If we were living in another time, a woman like Mademoiselle Camille Claudel would be covered with honors, and well rewarded.”

As for Rodin? As I said above, I think that he was partly responsible for Camille’s downfall, because he didn’t understand her, because her character was too strong for him, and because, consciously or unconsciously, he was afraid that she might surpass him, which I think she did in some of her works. I believe strongly that Sakountala is more powerful than l’Eternelle Idole, that Clotho is more interesting than La Vieillesse. I also think that Camille stayed far too long in Rodin’s studio, that she didn’t know how to rid herself of her anti-Rodin obsessions, and that art didn’t save her.

JH: Can you tell us a little bit about the new Musée Camille Claudel in Nogent sur Seine? Were you involved in its creation, and if so, how?

RMP: The opening of the Musée Camille Claudel is a miracle: now her work can finally be presented to the whole world. It’s a beautiful, light-filled museum in the center of Nogent sur Seine, this small city that was home to the Claudel family for three years (1876-79), a period that was crucial in the launching of Camille’s career. She is not the only artist featured in the museum: her works are surrounded by those of her first teacher, Alfred Boucher, who was a discoverer of talents and founder of la Ruche, and of Paul Dubois, who once made a prescient remark to Camille: “Have you studied with Monsieur Rodin?”

For a long time I had the idea of creating a museum dedicated to the work of Camille Claudel. I had spoken about it in the 1980s with Michel Baroin, who was then mayor of Nogent. He agreed with me that this would be a good idea. Time went by, and the idea eventually took hold. In 2003 Gerard Ancelin, who was mayor of Nogent for 25 years, and is passionate about sculpture, organized an exhibition of her work. It was a resounding success, even though Nogent is an hour away from Paris, and the weather was snowy and cold. More time went by, and then finally, in 2008, Gerard Ancelin decided to launch the municipality of Nogent in a museum project, after hearing me complain once again, during my speech at the opening of a Camille Claudel exposition in Dijon, that it really was time to find a place to house the work of this artist. Along with Gerard Ancelin—who had the courage to launch this adventure by having the city and patrons of the arts buy the collection I had put together through the years, along with about a dozen works of art owned by Philippe Cressent—I finally had the satisfaction of seeing this museum created. Now her admirers can see La Valse, Le grand Persée, Les Danseuses, portraits of Rodin and of Paul Claudel, and all this in an enchanting space, neither too big nor too little, the jewel of a small city rich in artistic and literary history.

JH: How much do you think things have changed for women artists since the end of the nineteenth century, when Camille was trying to make her way as a sculptor? What still needs to change?

RMP: I don’t know if women artists have more of a chance today than at the end of the nineteenth century, but they certainly have more freedom. I only know one woman sculptor, really talented, who is climbing bit by bit, step by step, the ladder of success. But I am sure there are others who are practicing this art, in principle so unfeminine, but so enriching for those who have the will, the courage, the determination that it demands, to arrive at the desired result.

JH: If you could somehow, magically, be able to say something to Camille Claudel, and she could hear you, what would you want her to know?

RMP: If somehow, by magic I could communicate with Camille, I would say to her, “You’ve given me lots of trouble, lots of work, many worries, but also many joys. For these joys I thank you, and I hope that you for your part you would want to thank me for having paid you the homage you deserve, as one of the great sculptors of the nineteenth century, along with Rodin and Bourdelle. Who, according to their own testimony, saw in you nothing but an equal.”

Musée Camille Claudel, 10 Rue Gustave Flaubert, 10400 Nogent-sur-Seine. Closed Mondays April-October, Mondays and Tuesday November-March. Nogent is 65 miles southeast of Paris. Trains run frequently from Gare de l’Est and take about an hour. The museum is a 10-minute walk from the train station.

Janet Hulstrand is a writer, editor and teacher of writing and literature who divides her time between France and the United States. She writes the blog Writing from the Heart, Reading for the Road.  Other articles that Janet Hulstrand has written for France Revisited can be found here. 

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Corinne LaBalme has selected some of the most notable shows of the 2017 summer art and exhibition season.

Aix-en-Provence. At the Hôtel de Caumont, a mansion representing Aix’s most sublime example of 18th-century aristocratic architecture: Alfred Sisley. June 10 to October 15; Giovanni da Rimini. June 14 to October 8. Fondation Vasarely: Vera Rôhm. June 26 to August 31.

Giverny. To prolong a stay in Monetland or not, that is the question. Musée des Impressionismes. Tintamarre ! Musical Instruments in Art (1860-1910). Through July 2. Henri Manguin. July 14 to November 5.

Grenoble. Before or after a stroll through the valleys or a hike in the Alps. Musée de Grenoble. Henri Fantin-Latour. Through June 18.

Lille and suburbs. Further reasons to step off the train. Palais de Beaux-Arts. Carte Blanche to Three-Star Chef Alain Passard. April 8 to July 16. LaM (Villeneuve): Michel Nedjar. Through June 4. The Magical Art of André Breton. June 24 to October 1.

Marseille. When a city reputed to be one of France’s grittiest puts its trash on display. MuCEM. Vies d’ordures: The Economy of Trash. Through August 14.

Metz. The Pompidou Center continues to spread its wings. Centre Pompidou – Metz. Infinite Gardens: Giverny to the Amazon. Through August 28. Fernand Leger. May 20 to November 23.

Nice. Difficult to pull oneself away from the promenade and the old town, but here goes: Musée National Marc Chagall. Chagall’s Sculpture in the 1950s. May 27 to August 28.

Paris. Choices, choices, choices.
Grand Palais. Rodin, The Centennial Exhibition. Reserve in advance because the Rodin show, on the 100th anniversary of the sculptor’s death, is one of this summer’s blockbusters. Jardins (Gardens). Through July 24.
Musée Marmottan. Camille Pissarro: The First Impressionist. Put this on your list, Paris revisiters. Through July 2.
Centre Pompidou. Cy Twombly. Through April 24. Walker Evans. April 26 to August 14. David Hockney. June 21 to October 23.
Palais Galliera. Dalida: A Pop Diva’s Wardrobe. April 27 to August 13.
Musée Guimet. Kimonos. Through May 22. Japanese Countryside from Hokusai to Hasui and Asian Gold – Mnaag Masterpieces. June 22 to September 4.
Musée Picasso. Olga Picasso. Through September 3.
Musée d’Orsay. Mystic Landscapes – Monet to Kandinsky. Through June 25; Cézanne’s Portraits: June 13 to September 24.
Musée du Louvre. Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting. Through May 22.
Musée du Luxembourg. Pissarro à Eragny. Through July 9.
Musée Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Karel Appel. Through August 20. Derain, Balthus, Giacometti. June 2 to October 29.
Musée Jacquemart André. From Zurbaran to Rothko, The Alicia Koplowitz Collection. Through July 10.
Musée de Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac. Picasso Primitif. Through July 23. Sacred Maori Stone. May 23 to October 1.
Fondation Louis Vuitton. Art/Afrique, le nouvel atelier. April 26 to August 28.

Pau. Musée National du Château de Pau. Portraits of Children from the Gramont Collection. Through May 21. Treasures of the 16th Century Navarre Court. April 7 to July 9.

Pont-Aven. Art call in Brittany. Musée de Pont-Aven. Modernity in Brittany/1: From Claude Monet to Lucien Simon (1870 – 1920). Through June 11. Modernity in Brittany/2: From Jean-Julien Lemordant to Mathurin Méheut (1920-1940). July 1- January 7.

Rouen. Trying to avoid OD-ing on Impressionism, Normandy gets hooked on Picasso. Musée des Beaux Arts. Picasso at Chateau Boisgeloup. Musée de la céramique. Picasso at Vallauris. Musée Le Secq des Tournelles. Picasso and Julio Gonzales: Works in Iron. All April 1 to September 11.

Versailles. Château de Versailles. Peter the Great, A Tsar at Versailles in 1717. Tzar Putin himself inaugurated this show alongside French President Macron. May 30 to September 24.

Vichy. At various locations in this old spa town, Festival Portrait(s), a celebration of portraits of all kinds, including those based on fiction and conceptual schemes. June 16 to September.

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By Janet Hulstrand

1880: On the Rue St. Georges in Paris’s 9th arrondissement, a painter of growing renown in both avant-garde and fashionable circles is having lunch at the crémerie where he often takes his meals. At nearly 40 years of age he is finally beginning to make his mark in the art world: his painting of Madame Charpentier and her children made a splash a year earlier at the Salon of 1879, which has provided needed income; and his other work, experimenting with new techniques of painting en pleine aire, is going well too.

He sees a pretty young woman enter the place with her mother. He sees in her instantly his ideal type: not too thin, rosy-cheeked, and with skin that “takes the light.” He introduces himself—his name is Auguste Renoir—and asks her if she will model for him….

The young woman, Aline Charigot, 21 years old, was from the village of Essoyes in the deep south of the Champagne region, near its border with Burgundy. She had begun her life in this village as an abandoned child: her father had walked out of their home one night before she was two years old and never returned to the family, leaving her mother without any means of support. Unable to pay the rent, or to provide for her child, the mother, like so many other poor women in rural France at the time, left for Paris to earn her living as a seamstress, leaving Aline with relatives, who would raise her. At age 15 Aline joined her mother in Paris and began to learn her trade. And that is when she met the man, the artist, who would change her life.

Aline accepted the invitation to model for Renoir and shortly after, they became lovers. In 1885 their first child, Pierre, was born. As the years went by, Aline made two significant requests of Renoir. One was to make their union legal by marriage. The other was to buy a home in Essoyes, the village where she had grown up.

He had no objection to the first request: by this time in his life he was ready to settle down. And so the marriage was performed in the district hall of Paris’s 9th arrondissement on April 14, 1890.

However, he was much less enthusiastic about the idea of spending much time so far away from Paris, the center of the art world, as well as the place where he had spent most of his life. Essoyes, today just 2½ hours away from Paris, was at the time a long and tedious journey, first by rail, then by horse-drawn carriage, that would have taken most of a day.

But eventually Aline’s entreaties won him over, and her dream of living a bourgeois life in her hometown came true. They initially rented a small house at the edge of the village during the summer of 1888, for a stay that lingered into the fall and even through the end-of-year holidays. In time Renoir became very fond of Essoyes, of the butter, the wine, the bread made there, declaring it superior to that in Paris. He said he loved being among the winegrowers “because they are generous.” He painted portraits of his family, of villagers, of the surrounding landscapes. The family was still spending much of the year in Paris, but from the late 1880s they began to regularly spend summers in Essoyes, the boy playing, the painter painting, the wife cooking. (She became famous among his artist friends for her culinary skills, in particular for her bouillaibaisse.)

Gabrielle Renard

By now, in his early 50s, Renoir’s work was selling well: he had achieved middle-class respectability, a position he balked at, but his wife took comfort in. By the time their second child, Jean, was born in 1894, they were able to hire a nanny, and Aline, now Madame Renoir, looked to her home village, and her family, for an appropriate person to fill this role. She found her in Gabrielle Renard, a young cousin living in Essoyes.

Like Aline, Gabrielle had not had an easy start in life: her mother was a widower who became pregnant out of wedlock, which subjected her to the disdain and disapproval of many villagers and even caused her own family to take her two older children away from her. So for Gabrielle too, the connection with Auguste Renoir would become a means of escape: she traveled and lived with the family in Paris, and later in Cagnes-sur-Mer, a town along the Riviera where the family would winter. Gabrielle became one of Renoir’s favorite models, the subject of literally hundreds of his paintings and drawings, including some of his most famous portraits—and a lifelong, dearly beloved maternal figure for Jean Renoir.

In 1896, the Renoirs bought the first home they had ever owned, on the edge of Essoyes. A two-story home with an open courtyard facing the street, and a spacious garden at the back of the house, this house became the center of the domestic life Aline had craved and Renoir scarcely knew he wanted but did appreciate when he had it.

For Jean Renoir, the second son, a filmmaker, the time spent in Essoyes became a kind of idyllic memory that he treasured all his life. “Essoyes, where my mother was born, has remained more or less unspoiled,” he wrote years later. “There is no other place like it in the whole wide world. There I spent the best years of my childhood…Every summer we would go back. My mother would invite friends and surround Renoir with this life that he loved so much…”

Ambroise Vollard, who became both the dealer and a friend for Renoir, as well as the dealer for many of the other artists in his circle, also recognized the importance of the ways in which Aline provided support to the artist in her own simple way. “I wonder if it is generally known that it is largely due to his wife that Renoir painted all his wonderful still lifes of flowers,” he wrote. “She knew what pleasure it gave him to paint flowers, but she realized that the trouble of going to get them was too much for him. So she always had them about the house…”

Jean also saw how important his mother was in his father’s life, and how well she understood him: “With her intuitive, rustic understanding, she saw that Renoir was made for painting the way vines are made to produce wine…” he wrote.

At first Renoir painted in a ground floor studio in the house. Nine years after they purchased the house, he built a studio at the far end of the garden, further evidence of their growing roots there. He built the studio, he said, so that he could paint “without disturbing the children at their play.” It was in this studio that he also worked on his first sculptures. Of course many of the works he did in Essoyes began en pleine aire. (Today several of those spots are marked with easels displaying reproductions of the works he painted there.)

Though by now he loved being in Essoyes, the damp climate in Champagne, with its cold winters, was not good for his increasingly severe case of rheumatoid arthritis. By 1907 his doctor had ordered a move to the South of France, and the Renoirs found a place in Cagnes-sur-Mer, where the the family began spending their winters in 1908. It was in Cagnes that Gabrielle met her future husband, Conrad Slade, an American painter. During the Second World War the Slades moved to the U.S., and in 1955, after her husband died, Gabrielle moved to California to be near Jean Renoir, who had also moved there during the war. They maintained a close relationship for the rest of Gabrielle’s life. “She taught me to see the face behind the mask and the fraud behind the flourishes,” said the filmmaker whose work shows great insight into both.

While they continued to spend time in Essoyes when they could, both of the Renoirs died on the Riviera: Aline in Nice in 1915, and her husband in Cagnes-sur-Mer in 1919. And though they were originally buried in the south of France, their remains were later returned to Essoyes for burial, in accordance with their wishes. Now they and all three of their sons, and some of the sons’ children and wives, are buried in the village cemetery, just a short walk away from the painter’s studio.

All three of the Renoir sons became artists: Pierre, a well-known actor of screen and stage; Jean, the director of La Grande Illusion and La Règle du Jeu, among many other films; and Claude, the youngest, a ceramist.

The house in Essoyes remained in the Renoir family and was used by Sophie Renoir, a granddaughter of Pierre Renoir, and her family until 2012. She then sold it to the municipality of Essoyes, which purchased the property in order to turn it into the centerpiece of Du côté des Renoir, Essoyes’ homage to the family. Renoir’s studio opened to the public in 2011: there is also a small but informative interpretive center next to the village hall.

Images of Aline and her young cousin, Gabrielle are prominently displayed in the streets of Essoyes. Several murals in the village reproduce Renoir paintings in which they appear: one, a portrait of Gabrielle and Jean Renoir as an infant, is on the site of Gabrielle’s birthplace.

The Year of Renoir

In honor of the public opening of Renoir family home on June 3, Aube, the department or sub-region in which Essoyes is located, has designated 2017 as the Year of Renoir. One of the major events is an exhibition entitled Un autre Renoir (Another Renoir) presented at the Museum of Modern Art in Troyes from June 17 to September 17 featuring portraits of the Renoir family and of Gabrielle, along with landscapes of the region.

Several Renoir works, on loan from museums in Bordeaux, Rouen, and Cagnes-sur-Mer, will be displayed in the Renoir home during the summer months. A weekend celebration called “Essoyes à la Belle Epoque” will take place on July 22 and 23.

Throughout the summer Bernard Pharisien, a local historian, will lead free walking tours of the village Sat., Sun., Mon. and Tues. mornings, in French only. Tours in English can be arranged for groups of 12 or more by writing to groupes.renoir@gmail.com

Champagne

The names Essoyes and Aube might be off the radar to most travelers, but the wines of champagne certainly aren’t. Indeed, Essoyes is one of the villages within the Côte des Bar growing area for champagne grapes. Visitors have the possibility to visit small grower-producers in Essoyes, as well as producers, from large champagne houses to small producers, in the surrounding area.

Getting to Essoyes

Essoyes is a 2 ½ hour drive from Paris. Troyes is an hour and a half train ride from Gare de l’Est in Paris: from there Essoyes is just under an hour’s drive southeast, through vineyards, fields of rapeseed and wheat, and beautiful rural villages. Trains run frequently from Paris’s Gare de l’Est to Troyes: some trains continue on to Vendeuvre sur Barse (one stop beyond Troyes) and Bar sur Aube. In Troyes you can rent a car from Hertz or Enterprise, both located near the train station (check opening times of rental agencies before purchasing train ticket). It’s also possible to take a taxi from Vendeuvre to Essoyes, about a 30-minute drive.

For further information

Essoyes Tourist Office: www.ot-essoyes.fr
Aube Tourist Office: www.aube-champagne.com/en/
Year of Renoir 2017: www.aube-champagne.com/fr/annee-renoir-2017/
Troyes Tourist Office: www.tourisme-troyes.com
Aube Champagne Growers: www.cap-c.fr

Another major art event in the department of Aube this year is the opening of the Camille Claudel Museum in Nogent-sur-Seine.

A Renoir Route that follows in the painter’s footsteps and naturally include Essoyes has been outlined as one of a dozen Impressionism Routes by the French association Eau et Lumière.

© 2017, Janet Hulstrand

Janet Hulstrand is a writer, editor and teacher of writing and literature who divides her time between France and the United States. She writes the blog Writing from the Heart, Reading for the Road. Other articles that Janet Hulstrand has written for France Revisited can be found here.

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The post The Painter’s Wife: Aline Charigot Renoir and the Renoir Home in Essoyes appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Ugolino and His Sons / Ugolin et ses fils
Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (1827-1875)
Marble of 1865-1867 based on plaster model of 1860-1861

The story for this sculpture is derived from Dante’s Divine Comedy, specifically a story from Inferno in which Dante encounters in his travels through hell the soul of Ugolino della Gherardesca.

Ugolino’s soul has arrived in the betrayal circle of hell following his decades of involvement in the many bloody political struggles within and among the city states of 13th-century Italy. After Ugolino’s power in Pisa has definitively been overthrown and captured, Ruggieri, Archibishop of Pisa, accuses Ugolino of treachery and orders him, his sons, his grandsons thrown into prison, where they are abandoned, the key thrown into the river.

There in prison Ugolino would watch his descendants die one by one of starvation, and, starving himself, and at his sons’ urgings to put an end to their suffering, he would eat their flesh before dying himself of starvation. As the soul of Ugolino tells it, “I threw myself, screaming and crawling, over their lifeless bodies, calling them two days after they died, and calling them again, until hunger extinguished in me what pain had left.”

The soul of Ugolino tells Dante this story as he continues to suffer his subsequent punishment in a special circle in hell reserved for betrayers of various kinds. There, two souls, Ugolino and Archbishop Ruggieri, are for eternity cramped together in a frozen hold from which only their necks and heads emerge and where Ugolino constantly gnaws away at Ruggieri at the place “where the brain meets the nape.”

A bronze version of this, cast in 1863 and originally placed in the Tuileries Garden, is now found in the Orsay Museum.

Carpeaux is also the sculptor of the joyful and seductive grouping of figures called “Dance” on the Garnier Opera in Paris (photo right).

The Burghers of Calais / Les Bourgeois de Calais
August Rodin (1840-1917)
Bronze of 1920s based on plaster cast completed in 1889

Rodin a successor to Carpeaux in the French sculptor hall of fame, also made his own version of Ugolino, which can be see in its monumental version in the ornamental pool at the back of the garden of Paris’s Rodin Museum and in a muddled miniature version on the Gates of Hell, a work inspired by Rodin’s passion, even obsession, for Dante’s Inferno.

Rodin’s greatest public sculpture, however, is The Burghers of Calais. The scene here is a historical event during the Hundred Years’ War between England and France.

For 11 months from 1346 to 1347 the English army of Edward III laid siege to the port town of Calais (the closest point between England and France, where the Chunnel now arrives). Aware that the town would starve to death if the siege continued, the commander of the garrison at Calais attempted to negotiate with the English, offering to surrender the town to the English if the Edward III were to agree to spare the population.

But Edward III wanted some form of vengeance of the trouble of laying siege for so long. He therefore offers to spare the town on the condition that six town leaders, or burghers, stripped of hats and shoes and any symbols of power and wealth, are brought to him bearing the keys of the city and with the rope with which they will be hung wrapped around their necks.

Rodin depicts the six men isolated in thought and movements, with each expressing a different mindset and stance with respect to despair, yet collectively they present a sense of ultimate patriotic sacrifice. And there’s amazing hand raised in a question that draws the viewer around to the back of work

Though the men are depicted as they are headed toward their individual and collective deaths, they were in fact spared. It’s said that Edward III’s queen Philippa stepped in at the last minute and begged the king to spare the lives of such heroic men willing to sacrifice themselves for the survival of their fellow citizens.

This intensely expressive and moving work was created to be placed in front of Calais’s City Hall, where the original was inaugurated in 1895. A number of copies were made after Rodin’s death, including this one at the Met and another at the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia. Another copy stands in the Rodin Museum in Paris, which occupies the mansion and garden where Rodin worked and lived when in Paris beginning in 1908.

Hercules the Archer / Héraklès archer
Antoine Bourdelle (1861-1929)
Bronze of 1920s based on original plaster model of 1909

Antoine Bourdelle studied with Rodin and began making a name for himself in the early 1900s as he began to purify and simplify his forms. He has created in this, his most celebrated work, a remarkably balanced tension in which the viewer anticipates the unleashing of Hercules’s arrow.

The story here is that of Hercules’s sixth labor.

Driven mad the goddess Hera, Hercules killed his children in a fit of madness, a.k.a. temporary insanity. As penance, he was told by the oracle to serve King Eurystheus and perform for him ten labors, two of which where eventually considered invalid and so finally amounting to twelve.

His sixth labor was to eradicate the flock man-eating birds that had the lake near the city of Stymphalus. Hercules used god-made castanet-like noisemakers to scare the Stymphalian birds into flight then shot them down with his bow and arrow.

There are a number of bronze versions of this around the world. The one in France’s national collection is in the Orsay Museum. A plaster version is in the Bourdelle Musem which occupies the studios and home where Bourdelle worked and lived in Paris’s Montparnasse Quarter from 1885 on.

– Photos and text by GLK

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Rembrandt naturally looms large in any study of Dutch art of the golden age that was the 17th century, as well as any other period since then, and we all love to peek in on the goings on in a Vermeer home, but you have to look hard to find their works here.

That’s because this isn’t so much an art show as a history show that uses art to inform its viewers. It’s a didactic show that offers a very good overview of what made 17th-century Holland so golden and how art reflected and contributed to its brilliance. As appealing as many of the hundred some paintings and etchings, mostly on loan from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, may be, few inspire a prolonged or studious stare. And they are too diverse to add up to a single vision of art at the time, except to give a sense that there was a lot going on.

Actually, that “a lot going on” is largely the point. With relative freedom of worship, a wealthy upper class, and a growing middle class looking to decorate their homes with paintings as only aristocrats and religious institutions could elsewhere in Europe, artists were called upon—and called upon themselves—to explore (and specialize in) all kinds of subjects: still lifes, rural life, landscapes, cityscapes, family and individual portraits, religion, and daily life.

Shows at the Pinacothèque, Paris’s premier private museum, tend to rely heavily on the written word to make their point, and that is especially the case in this exhibition where the descriptions at the start of each of the show’s eight sections (in French on the wall, to be joined by text in English around mid-October) are important to understanding and enjoying the works.

Prepared by text, the viewer is then all the more willing to pause before works that serve as excellent illustration of the various angles in which life in 17th-century Holland, both artistic and economic, is examined: 1. the artists and their world, 2. still-lifes and applied arts, 3. the city, 4. the countryside, 5. religious images and objects (Rembrandt’s cameo), 6. the citizens, the regents and the aristocrats within the republic, 7. the republic and the Dutch East Indies, and 8. genre scenes/scenes of daily life (Vermeer’s cameo).

Altogether, The Dutch Golden Age (disregard the second half of the show’s title) is a highly informative show. Forget about Vermeer. And bring your reading glasses.

The Dutch Golden Age, from Rembrandt to Vermeer

Oct. 7, 2009-Feb. 7, 2010

Pinacothèque de Paris, 28 place de la Madeleine, 75008 Paris. Metro: Madeleine. Tel. 01 42 68 02 01. Open daily: Mon., Tues., Thurs., Sat., Sun. 10:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., Wed., Fri. 10:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Entrance: 10€.

© 2009, Gary Lee Kraut

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The confirmation of that shift came in 1966 when the museum inherited from Michel Monet his collection of works that he’d in turn inherited from his father Claude. That suddenly made the Marmottan Museum home to the world’s largest Monet collection.

Little by little over the next 50 years other donations and successive rearrangement of displays have succeeded in pushing Marmottan’s Napoleonia to a secondary role in favor of works that, somewhat ironically, were created during Paul Marmottan’s lifetime (1856-1932) but that would scarcely have interested him as a collector. The addition of Monet to the museum’s name is the consecration of that shift.

Nevertheless, while visiting the permanent collection recently before seeing the museum’s exhibit Fauves and Expressionists, which runs through Feb. 10, 2010, I was struck by what a soothing foil the straight lines, shiny veneer, and bronze edges of the Empire furniture is for the insubstantial density of the Impressionists.

On the ground floor of the mansion, beyond the portraits of scantily clad women and meritorious men that once held a prominent place on Marmottan’s walls, there’s a surprising decorative harmony between Marmottan’s furniture and the works of Morisot, Gaugin, Renoir, Caillebotte, Pissaro, and especially Monet.

Though the works from the late 19th century here may seem redundant if you’ve recently visited the Orsay Museum, the pleasure of an uncrowded view is anything but redundant while admiring such works as Pissarro’s “Outer Boulevards, Effect of Snow” (1879), Corot’s stunning “The Pond of the Town of Avray, View Through the Branches” (1865), in which you can feel the wind, and Caillebotte’s “Paris Street, Rainy Weather” (1877). For those who don’t know Berthe Morisot’s works, the Marmottan is the place to discover them, yet the museum is above all a window into the work of Monet.

There are astounding Monets from the master’s early burst of Impressionism, such as “Vetheuil in the Fog” (1879), not to mention “Impression, Sunrise” (1872), which isn’t impressive so much as significant since it’s the work whose name and effect gave verbal unity to an entire movement.

It’s upstairs that the Marmottan Monet Museum is truly unique because of the museum’s tremendous collection of late Monets. I personally find it unfortunate that there’s no Empire furniture upstairs as a reminder that this was once someone’s home rather than yet one more excuse for wall space. Nevertheless, the fact that one’s full attention is drawn solely to works is quite effective.

Anyone who has ever been to or is planning to go to Giverny would be remiss in failing to see this permanent collection. The same might naturally be said about the vast “Water Lilies” in the Orangerie, but there is something formal and stately about those magnificent stretches of canvas that makes them less personal. The works here allow for a better and more personal understanding of the relationship between Monet (1840-1926) and his garden.

See, for example, “Japanese Bridge” (one from 1919, another from 1923), “The Weeping Willow” (one from 1918, another from 1919), “The Roses” (1924-1925), and “The House in Roses” (1922—several versions), in which a man in his 80s looks toward his home but seeing only vegetation while being swallowed by roses. His “Wisterias” (1919-1920) aren’t flowers so much as the frustrated, obsessive mind of an artist wanting perhaps to lie down in his garden and allow it to grow over him. “Irises Yellow and Mauve” (1924-1925) shows a man in ecstasy before his palate following a cataract operation.

Only after visiting the permanent collection should you venture into the basement to see the temporary exhibit.

Fauves and Expressionists
This may not be the most extraordinary exhibit in Paris this fall and winter, but I find it the most naturally and effortless pleasing art museum experiences of the season due to the play between the permanent exhibit noted above and the temporary exhibit.

The eye makes a dramatic yet finally easy transition from the works described above to the deep variants of blue and red and blushing green of the Fauves and their cousin Expressionists.

There isn’t actually much unity to the exhibit, as the name of the show indicates, aside from the fact that the works come from the Von Der Heydt Museum in Wuppertal, Germany (which is concurrently and in exchange showing a Monet exhibit). There are some eye-catching pieces here—Braque, Dix, von Jawlensky, Kandinsky, Holde, Kirchner, Beckmann—yet there are better demonstrations of Fauvism at the Orsay and of Expressionism at the Pompidou Center. Nevertheless, this is still a dazzling exhibition because the air of the late Monets viewed upstairs hang over the exhibit like a primeval fog, even if those Monets were actually painted after many of the works on the exhibit.

Soulages Retrospective
Meanwhile, across town at the Pompidou Center, black dominates in the retrospective of the work of Pierre Soulages, the most famous living French artist.

“One day when I was painting,” Soulages is quoted on the exhibit wall as saying in 2005, “the block took over the whole surface of the canvas… Out of the darkness came light, a pictural light whose particular emotional force provoked in me a desire to paint… My instrument was no longer the black but the secret light it radiated, all the more powerful in its affect for its coming from the greatest absence of light.”

The depth of variety of the work in this retrospective builds in waves in the same way that Monet’s works from his garden and pond do. Though many of Soulages’ painting, particularly earlier works, allow white, off-white, beige, brown, and occasionally blue backgrounds to speak from the beyond, more recent works focus, often exclusively, on the way in which light attaches itself, reflects on, or hangs from the black.

There is both constancy and evolution in Soulage’s work as there is in Monets. Indeed, a parallel can be made between the brilliant obsession that has led Soulages, born in 1919, to remain inspired by black as he has been for decades and that led Monet, for the last 40 years of his life, to return incessantly to the light and colors in his backyard.

There is also a natural opposition between the two artists since while Monet inspires a garden party, Soulages calls for solitary contemplation, or not so much contemplation as consciousness.

“I think I make paintings,” he said in 2007, “so that those who look at them—myself, like everybody else—can find themselves in front of them, alone with themselves.”

Finally, just as the Fauves and Expressionists on display at the Marmottan are enhanced by the Monets, so Soulages benefits from the view of the gray rooftops and sky of Paris, one of the best views of the city.

Soulages says that has a beautiful, expansive view just outside his studio but that he works in a studio without a view because the exterior space only disturbs him. After allowing oneself to be submerged into Soulages black paint, the disturbance of a view from the top of the Pompidou is both welcome and all the more astounding.

© 2009, Gary Lee Kraut

Fauves et Expressionnistes at the Musée Marmottan Monet, Oct. 28, 2009 – Feb. 20, 2010. Open 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., until 9 p.m. on Tues. Closed Mon. 2 rue Louis-Boilly, 16th arr. Metro La Muette. www.marmottan.com. Entrance: 9 euros, includes the permanent collection.

Soulages at the Centre Pompidou, Oct. 14, 2009 – March 8, 2010. Open 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., until 11 p.m. on Thurs. Closed Tues. Place George Pompidou, 4th arr. Metro Rambuteau. www.centrepompidou.fr. Entrance: 12 euros.
When considering the pricing of exhibits in Paris it’s worth noting that the admission price for this exhibit includes access to all of the temporary exhibitions at the Pompidou Center plus the excellent permanent collection plus the view.
For more on Soulages in French see www.pierre-soulages.com.

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