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. 

The post Camille Claudel’s Great-Niece Shines Light on the Sculptor’s Life and Work appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

* * *

The leaves have mostly fallen from the vines. Here and there small bunches of grapes, unripe at harvest time, remain. Sweet now but abandoned, they are the remnants of the pinots—noirs and meuniers—fermenting in vats of Olivier Belin’s champagne installation outside Chateau-Thierry, 55 miles east of Paris in the Marne Valley.

Further up the valley, the river flows into the heart of the champagne-growing area, past the town of Epernay and the Mountain of Reims. That’s the area that most travelers think of when considering a champagne wine excursion. Belin’s vineyards don’t lie within the border of the historic Champagne region, rather in historic Picardy, but the appellation for the world’s most evocative sparkling wine extends beyond the historic borders.

The western portion of the Marne Valley is primarily pinot meunier territory, the lesser known of the three major grapes of the overall champagne winegrowing zone. Meunier represents about one third of the wine that is assembled in various proportions into making champagne. It is often described as the workhorse grape, pulling the plow to add body for the more refined chardonnay (30% of the growing area) and the more noble and familiar pinot, noir (38% of the growing area). To hear some producers in the Reims-Epernay area speak of pinot meunier you’d think that they were embarrass to be pressing it at all, though press it they do. Given little respect as a grape on its own, meunier is the Rodney Dangerfield of champagne grapes.

Yet in this portion of the Marne Valley, within 10 miles east and southwest of the town of Chateau-Thierry, where 70% of the vines are pinot meunier, meunier holds its head high. Rather, its growers hold their heads high. Among them are the 40 grower-producers that form an association of Marne Valley winegrowers called the Association des Ambassadeurs du Terroir et du Tourisme en Vallée de la Marne, of which Belin is co-president.

“We are artisan winegrowers,” says Belin. “But that doesn’t mean that we’re tinkerers. Our cellars aren’t necessarily beautiful but it’s the work of the winegrower that one visits here.”

Indeed, this not zone of the sprawling chalk cellars, some of them medieval, even Roman quarries, as one can visit in the city of Reims. This is not the zone of vast underground installations as found in Epernay. This is not a zone of grand cru and premier cru vineyards. For the few (if growing number of) American visitors to this portion of the Marne Valley, the Chateau-Thierry area is less known for champagne than for the WWI battleground of Belleau Wood and the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery beside it. A tremendous American Monument overlooks the point in the valley where the German thrust of 1918 was stopped. The monument also overlooks a slope of champagne vineyard. So a taste of champagne or a deeper initiation into sparkling wine can be combined with war touring in the area.

Fact and figures about Champagne production and consumption

For the American consumer, selecting a champagne comes down to considering the labels of four or five brands, perhaps a few more at your more Francophile wine shop. Yet the champagne winegrowing region is home to 15,800 grape growers and 12,000 brand names. Only a handful of brands, those with large advertising budgets, reach most states of the union, though over the past decade medium and small houses and grower-producers have slowly been making their way into major markets.

More than half (52%) of all champagne is consumed in France. That doesn’t mean that the French are more festive than others, rather that champagne isn’t reserved for festivity in France but also serves as an aperitif at many gatherings, both casual and formal, social and festive. While bottles are available in a wide price range, there are plenty of worthy champagne available at under 30€, including a significant direct producer-to-consumer market offering good value bubbly for under 20€, as is the case of many of the champagne produced in the Marne Valley.

Even in France Marne Valley champagne is little known. Most people are unaware that the growing area extend this close to Paris, this close to brie cheese territory. Nevertheless, some of the grapes from these vineyards go into well-known labels. Belin, for example, sells a portion of his harvest to négotiants manupulants who buys grapes, juice or wine to make champagne on their own premises that they then market under their own label. All of the major champagne houses work that way. They may own some vineyards but need far more grapes than their own can provide.

Belin himself is a récoltant manipulant or grower-producer, meaning that he makes champagne on his own premises from the grapes of his own vineyards and under his own label.

The third major type of player in the wine business is the cooperatives, which produce champagne collectively, then sell them under a collective or individual label. There exist in the growing region 320 champagne houses and 39 cooperatives along with an astounding 4461 grower-producers, according to the Comité Champagne, the champagne trade association.

Last year, the U.S. ranked second in champagne’s export market (20.5 million bottles) after the U.K. (34.2 million) and before Germany and Japan (just under 12 million). Meanwhile, there are currently about 1.4 billion bottles in storage in the region.

Those are impressive numbers, but the most telling indicator of the difference between the French and the export markets is that in France 43% of champagnes bottles sold are produced by grower-producers or cooperatives whereas in the export market only 13% comes from those players. In other words, you’ll likely need to travel to discover them.

Champagne Gérard et Olivier Belin

As is often the case with small producers, Belin’s father and grandfather were grape farmers, selling their crop to others. His father, Gérard, then began selling champagne through a cooperative before producing champagne from his own grapes, under his own name. Having trained as an oenologist, Olivier began making wine with his father in 1997: tending the vines, harvesting and pressing, assembling wines, dosing sugar. He took firm hold on the reins of the business about five years ago while he continues to consult his father for his opinion whether in his vineyards or in the cellar. The label of Champagne Belin indicates both names. Olivier’s wife Katty is also involved in the family business.

Olivier Belin’s grandparents owned four hectares (just under 10 acres), to which his parents added two more. Belin now produces about 40,000 bottles per year, 60% of which he sells directly to consumers. The average grower-producer in the area makes about 20,000 bottles per year. Altogether the association’s members produce about one million bottles per year. That’s a drop in the champagne bucket consider that 310 million bottles were sold in 2015 for the entire winegrowing region. (Overall, Marne Valley vineyards represent about 10% of the overall champagne vineyard zone.).

With a hectare of champagne-grape vineyard now selling for 1-1.2 million euros, grape growers may be sitting on a gold mine, but it isn’t land wealth that one encounters in the area, rather the work and passion of these grower-producers.

To visit Belin’s installations and taste his sparkling wines in his little tasting room is to glimpse the passion of an artisan involved in his product from start to finish and from tradition to renewal. It’s the opportunity to understand the choices that winegrowers make in producing their product range. Belin, for example, appreciates the use of some oak barrel aging in his assembly. The men and women in the winegrowers association that Belin co-presides may not be tinkerers, but in encountering several of them it becomes clear that they enjoy the occasional risk of the fiddling with their grape juice, such as to create “micro-cuvées” of only a few thousand bottles.

Belin’s champagnes and those of many other winegrowers in the Marne Valley are proof that proper champagnes for celebration or for a friendly aperitif can be found for under 22€. However, it isn’t so much the price of champagne that makes visiting these local worthwhile (though Paris residents might want to take the opportunity to stock up) but the opportunity to discover the humanity behind the production of a world’s most famous sparkling wine.

Furthermore, there’s a fascinating diversity of champagnes produced in the Marne Valley, within their natural reliance on pinot meunier. On a daytrip from Paris—and certainly one can stay longer—the wise wine traveler will visit two or three winegrowers over the course of the day or the afternoon (if combined with war touring) to appreciate the diversity of approaches in the area.

Champagne Marteaux

A bench on the hill above the village of Azy-sur-Marne, four miles southwest of Chateau-Thierry, offers a view of the amphitheater of fields surrounding the village. This one of the prettiest views in the valley, though few come this way. It isn’t the view that might lead a traveler here so much as a visit to winegrower Olivier Marteaux.

Previously, polyculture was a way of in the area; farming meant wheat, corn and beets. Those crops are still grown in the area but vineyards is what one most notices when driving through the valley.

Olivier Marteaux’s ancestors were polyculture farmers until the 1950s. His grandfather then developed a wine nursery, selling young vines to grape farmers. In the 1980s the family began keeping their vines so as to grow grapes themselves. They made champagne with the local cooperative before eventually using their grapes exclusively for their own production. With 9 hectares (22.2 acres) of vines—65% pinot meunier, 20% chardonnay, 15% pinot noir—Marteaux currently produces 40-50,000 bottles per year.

Marteaux concocts what might be called connoisseur’s champagnes in the sense that they provide a deep, rich taste of terroir that one doesn’t always associated with bubbly. His vintages have been aged for at least six years prior to disgorgement and typically have low sugar content, such as the 2008 extra brut with 2 grams of sugar for a wine that’s 60% pinot meunier, 20% chardonnay and 20% pinot noir.

Among his four types of champagne he makes a rose de saignée, 100% pinot noir from a single parcel. Its tart fruitiness of Marteaux’s rose may not reflect what we’re accustomed to a rose champagne, but it is a taste that will give the wine-curious traveler a sense of the variety available in champagne wines in general and in the Marne Valley’s in particular. A 100% pinot noir champagne is a rarity in these parts and it’s interesting to compare Marteaux’s rose with Belin’s rosé de saignée, which is 100% pinot meunier.

Saignée is the more erudite way of producing rose since it requires precise pressing in order to obtain the proper color from the skin. In champagne production the preferred and allowed method for making rose is by adding red still wine (from pinot meunier or pinot noir) in assembling the wine so as to adjust the color along with the taste. Belin also makes a rosé d’assemblage. More than 90% of rose champagne gets its color that way.

Marteaux’s wife Laetitia if fully involved in the business, just as is Katty Belin is involved in the Belin family business. These are truly family affairs, which is the case of the vast majority of members of the local winegrowing association.

The Champagne et Vous wine festival

A great opportunity to meet producers on an easy daytrip from Paris is at the annual wine festival Champagne et Vous (Champagne and You) organized by the Marne Valley winegrowers association. The weekend festival takes place in late October in Chateau-Thierry on the site of the ruins of Thierry’s chateau. It’s a largely local event that invites the area’s population to understand the role of winemaking in the local economy and affirm the place of these grower-producers in the champagne-making landscape.

See Champagne et Vous for further information about the festival including portraits and addresses of participating winegrowers.

Addresses and further information

Champagne Gérard et Olivier Belin
30A Aulnois
02400 Essômes-sur-Marne
Tel. 03 23 70 88 43

Champagne Marteaux
6 Route de Bonneil, 02400 Azy-sur-Marne
Tel. 03 23 82 92 47

The Chateau-Thierry Tourist Office, situated near the House of France-America Friendship (see this article) can help those travelers who arrive with any prior appointments but would like to make last-minute arrangements to visit Marne Valley winegrowers.

For further information about war touring and other sights in the area, also see this article on France Revisited.

A B&B and lunch suggestion: Chateau de la Marjolaine
Two miles southwest of Chateau-Thierry, Jean-Pierre and Bruno have transformed this manor house by the river into an attractive B&B, restaurant and champagne bar.
27 Hameau d’Aulnois
02400 Essômes sur Marne
Tel. 03 23 69 77 80 or 06 60 39 98 79

© 2016, Gary Lee Kraut

The post Wine Travel: Respect for Pinot Meunier in Marne Valley Champagnes appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

* * *

Blois (pronounced a sharp blwa, vampire-like) holds a prominent place on the map, yet its castle is often ignored in favor of more photogenic stars of the valley. Chambord, Chenonceau, Villandry, Azay-le-Rideau, Usée and Saumur, for example, readily lend themselves to adjectives such as majestic, exquisite, idyllic, dramatic, elegant or storybook. (Match the adjectives with the chateaux and you get a free subscription to France Revisited for the rest of this year.)

Blois Castle, le château de Blois, stands on a rise on the right bank of the Loire but it offers no great photo op from the river. The Blois Tourist Office might well sue me for libel for showing this gray-weather shot from the bridge across the river.

And the main entrance to the castle is more promising though still not as imposing or impressive or fairy-tale as we’d like our castles to look, particularly when seen under an indeterminate sky.

But that doesn’t make Blois any less notable. This is in fact the most historically and architecturally significant of the chateaux of the Loire Valley. Admittedly, that isn’t a line you use to get your spouse to choose Blois as a vacation destination or to get your 12-year-old excited about a trip abroad (how about telling him/her that there’s a Magic Museum with dragons in the windows across the square?). Nevertheless, Blois is a key to understanding the valley’s castle-scape.

What it lacks in outward photogenia it makes up for in details, in revealing history and in convenience to daytripper and valley bikers. Blois does have character(s). You just need to get closer to see it/them.

Let’s take a look.

Amboise Castle, a left bank chateau 22 miles downstream, is more photogenic from across the river but it’s now far less notable inside. Amboise is where Charles VIII (born 1470-reigned 1493-died 1498) died from fracturing his skull on a door lintel (careful when visiting old castles, folks, they weren’t designed with Disney building standards in mind, and just you try suing someone for tripping on a cobblestone).

Charles VIII and Queen Anne of Brittany were childless, so with no direct heir his cousin Louis d’Orléans ascended to the throne as Louis XII (1462-1498-1515).

Louis XII

Louis may have had Orleans in his name but he was a native Blésois, as the inhabitants of Blois are called. A century earlier, in 1391, his grandfather Duke Louis I d’Orléans, brother to then king Charles VI, had purchased the fortress of the Counts of Blois whose power had waned. He took full control of the county six years later. While most of the counts’ fortress was razed to its foundations to make way for the new castle of the mounting Orleans clan, Louis I kept the fortress’s Great Hall (1214), one of the largest civil halls in France still existing today from that period.

Louis XII would in turn raze much of the castle of his father and grandfather, again conserving the Great Hall as he pursued a transformation of the family castle to make it worthy of a king. (We’ll return to the Great Hall later in our visit.)

Louis XII greets us above the entrance.

Below him, his symbol: the crowned porcupine. His motto: qui s’y frotte s’y pique, meaning rub against him and you’ll get pricked (literally) or cross swords with him at your peril or if you don’t watch out you’ll get burned.

The initials to either side of the porcupine: L for Louis and A for Anne, you guessed it, of Brittany, his cousin’s widow. Anne was no looker, but having the duchy of Brittany in her dowry made her quite the catch. Louis therefore obtained the annulment of his own childless first marriage to wed her. Anne’s symbol, the symbol of Brittany, was the ermine, a pattern of black stoat (weasel) coats against a white background.

Viewed from the outer square, Louis XII’s brick-and-stone wing, circa 1500, speaks of the end of an era (Gothic). Inside we follow the call of a new era (Renaissance), a pleasure palace with a vast hallway and a succession of royal apartments. The main Louis XII wing now houses the town’s Beaux-Art Museum (more on the museum later). A chapel, truncated by subsequent developments at Blois, also remains from this time.

Louis and Anne had two surviving children, daughters, Claude and Renée, however the succession laws of the French kings stated that the crown could only pass to a male heir. That meant the search for good (i.e. useful) marriages for the girls and likely inheritance of the crown by cousin François (Francis). There was therefore no better marriage for Claude (de France), the elder daughter, than to cousin Francois (d’Orléans).

Francois I

In 1515, less than a year into their marriage, Louis XII died and Claude’s husband became King Francois the First (Ier in French). (France has had plenty of Kings Louis and Charles and several Kings Henri but only two Kings Francois, the second being his grandson who reigned for only 17 months before dying from an inner ear problem at age 16.)

Claude, already duchess of Brittany by virtue of her mother Anne (she also inherited her mother’s looks), was therefore queen. Claude died at the age of 24, which gave her enough time to have seven children, including the future king Henri II—or perhaps it’s better said that having seven children by the age of 24 killed her, and getting syphilis from her husband didn’t help.

While Francois has gone down in history as a powerful builder king, Claude is remembered in the name of a sensual green or yellow-green plum, la reine claude, found ripe in markets in August. Francois I remarried after Claude’s death but had no children with his second wife, Eleanore of Austria, though plums continued to grow in the castle gardens. (Those gardens no longer exist; the city has grown into it.)

Francois grew up at the Chateau d’Amboise. It was there that he invited Leonardo da Vinci to be his neighbor. But Claude was naturally fond of her home castle at Blois and Francois I was intent on keeping it up-to-date. That meant tearing down portions of his predecessor’s château, already démodé, and creating something stylish and avant-garde.

This year France is commemorating the 500th anniversary of the coronation and reign of Francois (Francis) I. Chateaux great (e.g. Chambord) and small (e.g. Beauregard), however deeply or tangentially touched by the architectural and decorative spirit of the era of Francois I, are unfurling images of the broad-shouldered king with the long straight nose, sporting a thin moustache trickling into a full beard, wearing tights or armor, sitting in equestrian glory or standing in fur-lined grace. Blois itself is hosting a bookish exhibition called “Royal Treasures, the Library of François I,” running July 4-Oct. 18, 2015.

The equestrian statue of Louis XII may get the photo op at the entrance to Blois Castle, but it’s Francois I’s see-and-be-seen staircase that draws the lens once in the courtyard—though how to photograph it properly without looking like it’s been seen in a funhouse mirror is anyone’s guess.

Let me try again.

I give up. Photography may have become the lazy man’s travel writing but a skilled photographer still has his place.

Francois I (1494-1515-1547) would go on to launch enormous royal projects at Chambord, Fontainebleau and the Louvre, but he made his first mark on royal architecture at Blois. Palaces constructed or altered in his name were signed with his royal symbol the fire-breathing salamander and the motto nutrisco et extinguo referring to flames that nourish his people and extinguish his enemies.

The salamander sets the tone for decorative relief by the base of the showy outer staircase that defines the Francois I wing.

This is Blois’ architectural claim to fame. With loggia for nobility to look out onto the courtyard and to be seen from below, the theatrical staircase (1515-1519) and the wing of the castle that it serves set the stage for a new architectural style that would now developing throughout the valley. The Francois I wing gave royal momentum to the French Renaissance, thanks largely to Italian architects and decorators in its early phases.

This is no Eiffel Tower. Go to the top of the staircase and you’ll have little more than a view of tourist tripping over cobblestones down below (be sure to look up, though at the way in which the structure meets the ceiling). Nevertheless, this remains one of the architectural treasures of the Loire Valley. Again, not enough to plan a honeymoon around, but there you have it, 16th-century architectural sophistication—dramatic staircases were becoming all the rage.

If approaching from the train station, a 10-15 minute walk, your first view of the chateau is the back of the Francois I wing. Based on an Italian model, it looks more like an apartment building in Rome than a royal castle along the Loire.

It used to overlook the castle gardens but now faces a city road that wraps around a tremendous Atlas cedar. Beyond the cedar, one can also see from the balcony the orangery where citrus trees from the castle gardens were placed in winter. (The historical building now houses a gastronomic restaurant.)

Francois gets the architectural shout-out for this wing with the famous staircase, but the historical tale told inside speaks more about the era of his grandson Henri III.

Henri III

Francois I’s son Henri II (1519-1547-1559), who eventually died from being poked in the eye during a jousting tournament, preferred to place his architectural monograms elsewhere, including on the Louvre and at Fontainebleau. But Blois continues to speak of the presence of Henri II’s queen Catherine de Medicis and of their third son, Henri III (1551-1574-1589).

Henri III’s era of the French Court was as perverse and manipulative as our own in terms of power struggles, festivities, fashion, intrigue and assassination. We have our own politics in which a vocal, heavily armed group proclaims that the “true” religion should guide policy; we, too, go in for fear mongering, lies and rumors passed off for evidence that one man or one party will destroy life as we know it; we too hear the siren of the politics of nostalgia, etc. Admittedly, we prefer to assassinate character more than body these days and we pretend that telling an armed public that “someone ought to shoot that guy” is just an expression of disagreement, but we surround our politicians with a sizeable security detail just in case.

In 1576 and again in 1588, Henri III convoked at Blois an assembly of the Three Estates: the clergy, the nobility and the Third Estate, i.e. all others. The assembly took place in the Great Hall of 1214, originally built as a multi-purpose hall for the Counts of Blois. At its best the Estates (or States) General, as it was called, served as an advisory body offering wise counsel to the king. Otherwise it might be a way in which those with lesser or no power could let off steam or a quarrelsome nuisance that the king would ignore. The body met periodically at various venues from the early 14th century until 1614, then not at all until 1789, when discontent was so loud that Louis XVI could no longer postpone the reunion—but more than reunion, revolution was in the air.

The Wars of Religion between Catholics and Protestants marked the tenure of Catherine de Medicis and her three successive royal sons. It came to a head during the reign of Henri III. It was bad enough that factions of warring nobility saw no room to compromise, but the ultra-Catholics felt that disaster would befall the kingdom since Henri III was childless, making the heir to the throne his cousin Henri de Navarre, a Protestant.

The Great Hall is a magnificent space for its time and for a family photo op on the throne. Portions of the apartments of Catherine de Medicis and of Henri III are also visible. It’s less the heavily restored décor that makes them significant as the events that took place there. With the right guide (human or audio), the events that took place but gets us thinking about how similar the power struggles of the late 16th century are to the politics of our own time.

In order to calm the warrior spirit of the hawkish Catholic nobility and clergy against the Protestants (Huguenots) on the occasion of the Estates General of 1588, Henri III had the Catholic leader Duke Henri de Guise assassinated as the duke was walking through the king’s bedroom to a supposed pow-wow with the king.

“My God he’s tall,” the king is reported to have said upon seeing his slain rival. “He even looks taller dead than alive.”

The Duke de Guise’s brother, the Cardinal de Guise, also a conspirator against the king, was assassinated in Blois Castle the following day.

Twelve days later, Queen Mother Catherine de Medicis, died here of natural causes at the age of 79.

And seven months later, on August 2, 1589, Henri III was in turn assassinated, caught off guard while on the pierced chair (i.e. the can) at the royal Chateau de Saint Cloud (near Paris). His assassin was a monk named Jacques Clément who represented forces of what we would now call the religious far right.

Upon Henri III’s death the king’s chronicler Pierre de l’Estoile wrote: “This king would have been a good prince had he been born in a better century.” It’s doubtful though that such a century has ever existed.

Henri IV

Heir and party to the Wars of Religion, Henri IV was not only a distant cousin rising to the throne but was also a Protestant, two strikes against him that meant he had to conquer his kingdom. He would eventually convert to Catholicism to be in phase with the majority, but without abandoning the reformers.

Photo Henri IV. The central role that the Loire Valley had played in royal politics was coming to an end as the Bourbon kings asserted a firm hand throughout the kingdom and took up more frequent residence in Paris and then Versailles. Henri IV’s main association with the Loire is far downstream at Nantes, where he signed the edict that granted the right to Protestants to practice their religion in peace along with certain politic rights, thus closing the Wars of Religion in France.

He nevertheless showed enough interest enough in Blois to order the construction of a new building in the gardens. As a builder, his heart—before it was pierced by an assassin monk in Paris in 1612—was more focused on urban projects in the capital.

After his assassination his queen Marie de Medicis assumed the regency for underage Louis XIII. But a power struggle ensued when he son reached royal majority in his mid-teens and he exiled her to Blois to keep her from meddling in affairs of state. A painting in the Louvre, La Fuite de Blois by Rubens, shows her escaping from Blois through the construction site that had been launched by Henri IV. That building was never completed and was eventually demolished.

(To recap royal deaths from 1498-1612: Charles VIII died from banging his head on a door lintel at age 27; Louis XII died from intestinal trouble at age 52; Francois I died from septicemia related to fistula around the unmentionables and kidney failure at age 53; Henri II died from a brain infection caused by being poked in the eye at a jousting tournament at age 40; Francois II died from an ear infection at age 16; Charles IX died from pleurisy at age 23; Henri III was assassinated by a monk will sitting on the can at age 47, and Henri IV was assassinated by a monk while riding in his carriage at age 56. Not pretty, but, ah, but the castles they built!)

Gaston, Duc d’Orléans

Louis XIII saw no need to keep Blois Castle in the French crown and so gave it to his younger brother Gaston in 1626. Had the power days of Blois ended? Not if Gaston could help it. Any pretext was good for Gaston (1608-1660) to conspire against or otherwise disobey his brother because as long as Louis XIII and Queen Anne didn’t have a son he remained first in line for the throne.

By the second decade of their childless marriage, Gaston could reasonably dream of occupying the throne should his older brother predecease him. Blois would then become a royal residence again.

So Gaston hired one of the top architects of the time, Francois Mansart, to build a new wing to his castle, thus bringing Blois into the modern era of the 17th century. Gaston may well have rebuilt the entire castle, razing the previous structures like an old villa on beachfront property, but the throne eluded him. In 1738, after nearly 23 years of marriage, Anne of Austria gave birth to a son (presumably fathered by Louis XIII). The existence of a healthy boy distanced Gaston one step further from the crown, and when Louis XIII died five years later, the boy became Louis XIV.

The Gaston wing resembles a stand-alone chateau and is notable for its relatively early Classicism, but viewed from the courtyard it sticks out as ambition gone wrong; the focal point of the courtyard remains the Francois I wing with its external staircase. Architect Francois Mansart would lend his name to the mansard, a high-pitched roof pierced with windows, then coming into fashion.

The grace of the Gaston/Mansart wing comes especially from the symmetry of the central structure with pavilions on either side reaching out to embrace the courtyard. Through his work here and elsewhere, Mansart nevertheless helped usher in an architectural style that would later become associated not with Gaston Ier but with Louis XIV.

Louis XIV’s prime minister Mazarin, tired of Gaston’s conspiring against the crown during the king’s youth, eventually exiled Gaston to Blois. There he lost the ambition (and perhaps the funding) to complete his dream castle.

The decorative elements of the interior were never finished. The interior monumental staircase of the Gaston wing, crowned by a copula, looks like a grand stage between plays. But Blois was now far from center stage, and the Loire Valley itself was soon but a sideshow as, about the time of Gaston’s death in 1660, Louis XIV began drawing plans for the entire theater district move to Versailles.

The Beaux Arts Museum

The main Louis XII wing houses a small collection that lends itself as much to pleasant if disinterested meandering as it does to a more studious examination of representative 16th- and 17th-century paintings, and to a lesser extent 18th- and early 19th-century works, including glossy, theatrical historical works from the early 19th century called “troubadour” paintings.

For students of 19th-century restorations of medieval and Renaissance castles, Blois Castle is a must see. But since none of those students is reading this, we might be tempted to pretend that that the original equestrian statue at the castle entrance wasn’t actually destroyed during the Revolution and that this window with the ermine of Anne of Brittany has been safely in place for 500 years.

No, let’s not pretend. Let’s be truthful here: The history of French chateaux is rarely that of a single moment in history, and all the more so at Blois. What we see is the result of evolving tastes and ambitions, good fortune and bad, and restoration. In 1788 Louis XVI, five years short of the guillotine, abandoned any royal prerogative to Blois Castle. It then served as barracks for troops and officers with no interest in protecting its historical significance. With the Revolution soon banging at the door there was no interest in protecting its royal symbols either. What was saved was saved for practical rather than historical or emotional reasons.

Then, several decades later, historical mindfulness came calling. In 1840 Blois became one of the first royal complexes in France to be designated a historical monument. Major restoration began several years later, beginning with the rehabilitation of the Francois I wing. The Beaux-Arts Museum opened in 1869.

A room inside this chateau is dedicated to the 19th-century restorers, particularly one Félix Duban, an architect who oversaw the restoration of Blois Castle until his death in 1870. In his terrific travel book “A Little Tour in France,” Henry James, writing in the 1880s, laments the heavy-handed restoration work that he encounters on his tour of the provinces. Nevertheless, it’s thanks to that post-royal history—as barracks, as possession of the city, as object of restoration—that we get to see and to appreciate the lessons in history and architecture that Blois teaches.

To Blois or not to Blois

That remains the question. Is it more rewarding to aim for the monumental unity of Chambord, the loveliness of Chenonceau, the dramatic view of Chaumont, or to get studious with Blois? You can’t go wrong as you plan or wing your way through the castle-rich area of the Loire Valley between Blois and Saumur. Still, a traveler much choose between chateaux while leaving time to enjoy the other pleasures that the region offers—vineyards, gardens, culinary explorations, a zoo, a long stroll by the river.

The architectural developments themselves may seem insignificant 500 years on. Nevertheless, Blois, considered a (perhaps the) key to the Loire Valley, deserves attention.

© 2015 Gary Lee Kraut

Useful information

Château de Blois, Blois Castle, is open daily except Dec. 25 and Jan. 1. Fencing demonstrations are given July 13-Aug. 16, 2015. One reason to spend the night in or near Blois is to attend the wonderful sound-and-light show in the castle courtyard, April 4-Sept. 20, 2015.

Blois Tourist Office, is next to the castle at 23 Place du Château. Tel. 02 54 90 41 41. The office and its website also provide information about chateaux in the surrounding area.

Maison de la Magie, the magic museum and fun house across the square from the castle entrance. Watch for the dragons in the window. Open April 4-Sept. 20 and Oct. 17-Nov. 1, 2015.

Loire à Vélo is the name of the Loire Valley biking system covering a cycle trail of about 500 miles. Its official website is here.

Getting to Blois: From Paris, there are infrequent direct trains to Blois from the Austerlitz Station. They take 1 hour 25 minutes. More frequent indirect trains take 2 hours, arriving in Blois via Orleans (from Paris’s Austerlitz Station) or via Saint Pierre des Corps (from Paris’s Montparnasse Station). A daytrip from Paris is possible. One worthwhile approach to beginning your longer Loire Valley stay in Blois is to spend the first day and perhaps night in the town before renting bikes or a car for wider explorations in the valley. Bus service from Blois goes to the nearby chateaux of Beauregard, Cheverny and Chambord. Inquire at the Blois Tourist Office or see the bus schedule here.

Lodging in Blois and the surroundings area

B&Bs

La Maison de Thomas, 12 rue Beauvoir, 41000 Blois. Tel. 09 81 84 44 59 or 06 60 14 41 41. In the heart of the town, a friendly townhouse for those without wheels or for a night in Blois before or after a biking trip.

16 Place Saint Louis, 16 place Saint Louis, 41000 Blois. Tel. 02 54 74 13 61. At Philippe Escoffre’s B&B a 5-minute hike uphill from center, three cozy rooms look out to the cathedral and over the river. Yes, the name is the address.

Le Plessis, 195 rue Albert 1er, 41000 Blois. Tel. 02 54 43 80 08. On the downstream edge of the town with a chemical-free, salt-water swimming pool.

Le Clos Pasquier, 10-12, Impasse de l’Orée du Bois, 41000 Blois. Tel. 02 54 58 84 08. Claire and Laurent Nicot’s B&B in a 15th-century manor house is another 1.5 miles further downstream.

Hotels

Côté Loire – Auberge Ligérienne 2 place de la Grève, 41000 Blois. Tel. 02 54 78 07 86. A 2-star hotel and restaurant in Blois by the river.

L’Auberge du Centre, 34 Grande Rue, 41120 Chitenay. Tel. 02 54 70 42 11. Nine miles south of Blois. I found this 3-star village hotel with a pleasant restaurant. A choice stop during a biking trip in this portion of the valley.

La Maison d’à Côté, 26 rue de Chambord, 41350 Montlivault. Tel. 02 54 20 62 30. An 8-room inn with restaurant (1 star Michelin in 2015) 6 miles upstream from Blois toward Chambord

Le Château du Breuil, 23 route de Fougères, 41700 Cheverny. Tel. 02 54 44 20 20. Ten miles southeast of Blois, in the countryside two miles from the Chateau de Cheverny, Véronique and Bernard Gattolliat’s 39-room 4-star hotel with restaurant an swimming pool.

Domaine des Hauts de Loire, 79 rue Gilbert Navard, 41150 Onzain. Tel. 02 54 20 72 57.Ten miles downstream from Blois, across the river from Chaumont, a 4-star chateau hotel and restaurant. The 170-acre property also has a tennis court, outdoor pool, a pond where one can fish and bikes.

Restaurants in Blois

For a daytripper, one of the cafés below the chateau de Blois should suffice, or simply a sandwich and pastries from one of the bakeries in that area.

For those spending the evening: I’ve fond memories of a relaxed, gastronomic dinner at Christophe Cosme’s Le Rendez-vous des Pêcheurs, 27 rue du Foix. Tel. 02 54 74 67 48. Closed Sun. and Mon. There’s also the Auberge Ligérienne, a part of the hotel Côté Loire noted above. For a more formal meal in an airy historical setting there’s L’Orangerie du Château, 1 avenue Jean-Laigret. Tel. 02 54 78 05 36. It occupies the former citrus green house or orangery of the chateau. Also closed Sun. and Mon. For a more contemporary decor, more contemporary gastronomy, Assa, one mile downstream from center on the edge of the Loire, has 1 Michelin star (2015). 189 quai Ulysse Besnard. Tel. 02 54 78 09 01. Closed Sun. dinner, Mon. Tues.

– GLK

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Napoleon, as Bonaparte then as emperor, marked an era and much that came after. He also marked many towns, giving them letters of nobility—towns that now perpetuate his memory with more or less success.

The desire to promote the Napoleonic history of such places has given rise to the European Federation of Napoleonic Cities (Fédération Européenne des Cités Napoléoniennes), created by (Prince) Charles Napoléon, the oldest surviving male heir of Napoleon’s youngest brother Jerome.

The federation brings together European towns and cities whose history has been marked by Napoleon’s influence and that are willing to develop activities along three main lines: promoting exchanges on Napoleonic history by setting up meetings, seminars and publications in association with universities; supporting and promoting actions to preserve and restore Napoleonic heritage (objects, works of art, furniture, monuments, sites, etc.); developing and conducting activities that present that heritage in a positive light (exhibitions, arts events, discovery tours, especially in tourist and academic exchanges).

The desire to promote these activities with a recognizable logo has led to the creation of the trademark “Ville Impériale,” Imperial City. Associated French towns and cities whose heritage relates to the Empire, as the period of Napoleon’s reign is known, can identify themselves as such to the general public and to tourists with the new trademark and logo.

Leading the way in this effort is the town of Rueil-Malmaison, a western suburb of Paris, whose history is indelibly marked by the presence of the Chateau de Malmaison, once home to Napoleon and Josephine, his first wife.

Patrick Ollier, mayor of Rueil-Malmaison, Frédéric Lefebvre, French tourism minister, Charles Napoléon, and the mayors of Compiègne, Fontainebleau and Saint-Cloud came together in Rueil on October 21, 2011, to unveil “Ville Impériale” trademark and logo.

Josephine purchased Malmaison in 1799. Renovated between 1800 and 1802, the chateau frequently housed the couple through Napoleon’s reign as First Consul. In 1804 he declared himself Emperor Napoleon I and often required a larger setting to receive his imperial court; nevertheless he and Josephine continued to return to Malmaison until their divorce in 1809. Josephine then lived there until her death in 1814. The chateau today very much reflects the decorative spirit of the Consulate and of the Empire.

The towns and chateaux of Compiègne, Fontainebleau and Saint-Cloud, all within easy reach of Paris, also played important roles during the Empire.

Those behind the “Ville Impériale” trademark are now looking to rally other towns and cities to the cause of putting forward their Napoleonic past with the associated trademark and logo.

The logo promises to bring together history, culture and tourism and will perhaps give rise to a global approach to Napoleon. It’s a label that might well serve as a model for other heritage initiatives.

The Imperial Guard was present at Rueil-Malmaison for the unveiling of the new logo on Oct. 21, 2011, complete with music and canon fire.

Original text in French  by Georges Levet, Secretary of the French Association of Heritage Journalists, Association des journalistes du patrimoine.
Loosely adapted into English for France Revisited by Gary Lee Kraut.

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“There’s nothing to see here, but people still want to come,” he says.

He is Dominique-Charles Janssens, proprietor of the Auberge Ravoux, which now functions not as an inn but as a placeholder for the memory of Vincent Van Gogh. Mr. Janssens is also director of the Institut Van Gogh whose goal for for the past two decades has been to purchase a painting by Van Gogh to hang in this tiny attic room since the artist once wrote that he dreamt of having an exhibition in a café.

“There’s nothing to see,” he says, “but everything to feel.”

Yet I don’t feel much. If his room wasn’t such a tourist attraction would I be more inclined to feel the artist’s presence, his poverty, his mix of hope and despair in the final, prolific 70 days of his life?

I was here about 20 years ago, when there was a bit less to see and a bit more to feel but still didn’t feel much. Has revisiting dampened my interested in the subject? No, I was rereading Van Gogh’s letters to his younger brother Theo the other day and found them just as fascinating as when I first read them in my 20s.

Perhaps Mr. Janssens, a former marketing director with the Danone group, who purchased the inn 25 years ago, has given this presentation a few too many times and I’m overly aware that the “nothing to see but everything to feel” line is in the brochures.

There is nothing to see in Van Gogh’s room other than a small skylight, an old bistro chair, and a secure wall awaiting the painting. A 13-minute video about the artist is shown two rooms away.

I’m not disappointed, though, just ready to move on. I actually like the feel downstairs of the old bistro/café circa 1890 where we had coffee and a crossant. There was something to see there, some atmosphere to feel, a cup of coffee where Vincent had dinner.

Anyway, it isn’t for Van Gogh alone that I’ve come to Auvers-sur-Oise this time. It’s for Zadkine.

This summer Auvers-sur-Oise celebrates the 50th anniversary of the inauguration in town of a bronze statue of Vincent Van Gogh by the sculptor Ossip Zadkine (1890-1867).

Zadkine’s name may have been mislaid among the hit-parade of artists and sculptors who made their mark in Paris in the 20th century, yet his work has maintained its strength and depth and originality. The Zadkine Museum near the Luxembourg Garden, where the Russian emigree lived and worked from 1928 until his death, is a personal favorite of mine among the small museums of Paris.

Why Auvers
Daubigny, Corot, Cézanne, Pissarro, Vlaminck and others contributed to placing Auvers and surroundings on the map for the Impressionists and their kin both pre- and post. Daubigny is the least bankable of the names above, but it’s largely thanks to him that Auvers, where he lived from 1861 until his death in 1878, became known as an Impressionist hang-out. But it was Van Gogh, the least successful of these during his lifetime, who, in creating 70 paintings in 70 days and in dying here two days after shooting himself in the stomach, gave Auvers its lettres de noblesse as an art town.

We all now recognize the work he did during this final, prolific period of his life: his portraits (e.g. Doctor Gachet, Madame Gachet, self-portrait) and landscapes (e.g. the wheat field with crows) and views of Auvers’ major buildings (e.g. the church, town hall, the chateau). Nineteen plaques have been placed around Auvers with weathered reproductions showing where he mostly likely stood while painting the given view.

Across the street from the inn, Van Gogh painted the little town hall decorated for the 14th of July (Bastille Day) Ball; in the evening the square would be full of people, a brass band playing, the whole town dancing, laughing, drinking. But as he paints there is no one to be seen.

He painted the town’s church, wobbly in the evening nightfall, at the end of a lush, green day, a peasant woman walking by.

Van Gogh arrived in Auvers on May 20, 1890, and died on July 29 in that room where there’s nothing to see at the Auberge Ravoux. He was 37. His younger brother, confidant, and primary supporter Theo died of syphilis six months later. He was 33. There isn’t much to see at their plots in the cemetery, just two simple rounded tombstones, pillows on a single ivy-covered bed, but that’s enough to make you want to go home and read Vincent’s collected letters (primarily to Theo).

Beyond the wall of the cemetery is a field, where Van Gogh saw crows. He shot himself in such a field.

Why Zadkine

Local admirers of Van Gogh selected Zadkine for the commission of creating a statue to the artist in 1955. Zadkine’s Van Gogh stands in a non-descript park, a simple public green space where otherwise you’d scarcely want to stop on your way to the market. It shows a tall, thin figure, his hatch-marked face tense and focused, marching into the sun with his easel and paint utensils slung along across his chest and back. Zadkine described him as “an escaped prisoner who has left with his bars.”

Subsequent to the inauguration of his Van Gogh here in 1961, Zadkine received two other commissions for sculptures in places associated with the artist:
– a sculpture of Vincent and his brother Theo that stands in the Dutch village of Zudent, his birthplace;
– a bust of the artist that can be seen at the asylum at Saint Remy de Provence where Vincent interred himself from May 1889 to May 1890 following a troubled winter during which, after a fight with Gaugin, he cut off his earlobe and offered it to a prostitute.

From Saint Remy, Van Gogh returned to Paris then moved to Auvers, already known to his contemporaries and elders as a peaceable painter’s town. There was countryside here, and the Oise River passes by. Also, Dr. Gachet, who would watch over Van Gogh during his stay, lived here. Van Gogh’s portrait of Dr. Gachet is among the artist’s works at the Orsay Museum; it was a gift to the State by the doctor’s son. Dr. Gachet’s house is also being used to honor Zadkine this summer with a presentation of 19 lithographs.

Far more notable is the selection of sculptures, on loan through August 31 from the Zadkine Museum, that are exhibited in the Orangerie of the 17th-century Chateau d’Auvers. The selection shows the variety of Zadkine’s work from 1926 to 1963.

Another venue for Zadkine’s work this year is the Musee Daubigny, which is showing various sculptures and photographs relative to the creation and installation of his statue of Van Gogh. They give insights into the sculptor’s efforts to create a work honoring a fellow artist. It’s a small but worthwhile exhibit that includes a video showing Zadkine riding from Paris on the bed of a truck with his Van Gogh on the way to Auvers—quite amusing actually, the sculptor looking like a proud tourist as he rides along the Seine, past the Louvre.

On May 21, 1890, the day after Vincent’s arrival in Auvers, he wrote to his dear brother in what may have been a rather manic moment and lauded the beauty of Auvers’ thatch roofs and picturesque countryside.

But Auvers isn’t beautiful anymore, and probably hasn’t been for some time. It isn’t beautiful, it isn’t easy to get to, and there’s isn’t much to see at the inn, but there’s a lot to discover here… and possibly to feel. That’s up to you.

(c) 2011, Gary Lee Kraut

If you go
Zadkine in Auvers. Zadkine’s statue of Van Gogh is a permanent presence in Auvers. Zadkine’s works elsewhere in town are only on display April 2-Aug. 31, 2011.

Auberge Ravoux/Maison de Van Gogh (pronounced von gog in French), Place de la Mairie, 95439 Auvers-sur-Oise. Tel 01 30 36 60 60. Open early March to end October, Wed. to Sun., 10am-6pm. Entrance: 6€. Visit to room + 13-minute video + explanatory panels. During those months the dining room serves lunch Wed.-Sun. and dinner Sat. and Sun.
Auberge Ravoux, the original inn, has been restored as it would have been in 1890, though much of the meal space is in a new construction behind the inn. (At the time of Zadkine’s commission the inn where his admirers gathered bore the name Restaurant Van Gogh before reverting to Auberge Ravoux.)

The Chateau d’Auvers houses a permanent multimedia show that seeks to bring to life the art and leisure of the Impressionist period. There’s a café inside. Entrance: 13€.
The Zadkine exhibition is in the Orangerie, a separate entrance from the chateau. Entrance: 3€.

The Auvers-sur-Oise Tourist Office is located in the Manoir des Columbières, rue de la Sansonne. Tel. 01 30 36 10 06. Various tourist information can be found on the town’s website.

Musée Daubigny, within the building that houses the tourist office, is open afternoons Wed-Sun. as well as 10:30am-12:30pm Sat. and Sun. April-Oct. Entrance: 4€.

The Auvers-sur-Oise International Music Festival
An annual event bringing classical music to town from early June to early July (June 4-July 7, 2011).

Getting to Auvers
Access to Auvers from Paris by public  transportation can be complicated since it consists of taking the train from Paris’s Gare Saint-Lazare to the town of Pontoise then changing  trains for Auvers. Alternatively, take the train from Gare du Nord to Valmondois then change trains for Auvers. The trip takes about an hour with a decent connection. Or taxi from Pontoise (6 miles) or Valmondois (3 miles). Check the train schedule on any given day here.

On Satudays, Sundays and holidays from April through October, there is a direct 33-minute train from Paris Gare du Nord to Auvers departing Paris at 9:56am. The return train departs Auvers at 6:15pm, meaning that you’d be required to make a day of it. One could, I suppose,  but I suspect that I’d find myself waiting around for the train. Furthermore, the Auberge Ravoux recommends avoiding weekends, if possible, due to crowds since only small groups are allowed into Van Gogh’s room at any one time.

Staying in Paris
Musée Zadkine, 100 bis rue d’Assas, 6th arrondissement. Metro Notre-Dame-des-Champs or Vavin. Closed Monday and most holidays.

(c) 2011, Gary Lee Kraut

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One of the best places to enjoy their pastel charms is n the town of Troyes (pronounced like the French for three, trois), located in the department of Aube in the southern portion of the Champagne region, just north of Burgundy and 110 miles southeast of Paris. Troyes can be visited as part of explorations in Champagne (my own method for the purposes of this article) or when driving north from or south into Burgundy or even as a daytrip from Paris.

The skeleton of a maison à colombage is made from timbers that are further supported by various fillings such brick, chalk, plaster and most commonly an impermeable mix called torchis. Torchis is a mix of clay, chopped straw, lime, and sand that provides relatively good isolation. The filling or the entire façade may then be covered with roughcast or wooden or slate shingles.

In the 17th, it became fashionable to fully cover half-timbered façades with plaster or roughcast so as to make the building appear less rustic, more luxurious. Nowadays, however, showing the timbers has the edge in terms of charm.

Troyes made its mark on the map of Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries due to major commercial fairs that were held here because of the town’s privileged situation along the north-south trade route (the old Roman Agrippian way) from Italy to northern Europe and because of the relative independence of the Counts of Champagne, who controlled this region at the time.

Favorable trade winds returned to Troyes in the 16th-century and allowed for a handsome reconstruction of the town after a devastating fire in 1524, resulting in many of the half-timbered buildings seen today. The bon-bon colored commercial heart of the town is so attractive today thanks to a vast restoration project launched in the 1960s.

There nevertheless remains a certain rustic charm to the less rehabilitated zones just outside of the commercial center and to its non-restored buildings such as this.

Portions of Troyes’ cork-shaped city center is carfree, allowing for an attractive visit for a 2-3-hours walk-about if passing this way or for a full daytrip or an overnight. Other than the cavernous cathedral, the main views and squares and points of interest are in the body of the cork, including its most notable religious monument, Saint Madeleine Church, which has some beautiful wooden sculptures and intricate stonework…

… but is especially noteworthy for its 16th-century stained glass windows, including this excerpt depicting the creation of the world by a man with a beard.

Another man with a beard and a hat associated with Troyes is Rachi (1040-1105), a foremost Talmud and Biblical scholar who lived in Troyes. The Rachi Institute is adjacent to a synagogue which occupies a 16th-century half-timbered former abbey, two blocks from Saint Madeleine.

La Maison de l’Outil et de la Pensée Ouvrière, a tool museum a library dedicated to “working class thought,” isn’t for everyone, but you know that manly thrill you get when looking for the precise screw or awe in a hardware store? Well, you’ll find it in historic spades when visiting this collection of 10,000 tools particularly from the 17th and early 20th centuries. This is one of the best technical-minded museums in France. “Working class thought” is accounted for in books devoted to working-class life and culture and to technical studies.

As for the feminine thrill of selecting stockings and other knitwear, Troyes’s Musée de la Bonneterie/Hoisery Museum gives a wonderful glimpse of what Troyes was especially known for from the middle of the 18th century until the early 20th century.

Touring tips
Troyes, population 64,000 (120,000 with the suburbs), makes for an excellent daytrip from Paris (about 90 minutes by train) or for a stop while driving between Paris and Burgundy.

The textile industry is still present in and around Troyes, providing about 10,000 jobs, which explains the many factory outlets on the outskirts of the town at three main centers: Marques Avenue, Marques City, and McArthur Glen.

Though this area is removed from the heart of the Champagne-producing part of the region, a large swatch of Champagne grape vineyards lie 25 miles southeast of the town. If looking to visit a Champagne house in the area, Drappier would be a worthwhile choice, as mentioned in my 3-day Champagne Diary.

I enjoyed an overnight in the fine, central, contemporary 4-star hotel Relais Saint Jean. For good choices in all categories and for further practical information about Troyes, visit the website of the Troyes Tourist Office.

(c) 2010, Gary Lee Kraut

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* * *

Little by little over the coming decade Paris as we think of it will spread out from the confines of its peripheral boulevards and embrace its neighboring suburbs in the creation of Grand Paris, Greater Paris.

The umbrella project is still in its debating stage with various possible plans being drawn up and discussed across municipal borders, in Paris City Hall, and in the president’s palace, yet already various lights of the future constellation of Greater Paris are being designed. Some have already been illuminated. Case in point: Boulogne-Billancourt, a comfortable southwestern suburb of Paris, between the Seine and the Bois de Boulogne, accessible by metro at the end of lines 10 and 9.

The City of Light is still far from being thought of as the Region of Light, nevertheless Boulogne-Billancourt is well on its way to being a full-fledged part of Greater Paris. One small light was switched on this week with the opening of the Paul Belmondo Museum in Boulogne-Billancourt.

The museum, housed in little neo-Classical “folly” or pleasure palace, presents the work of Paul Belmondo (1898-1982), a sculptor (primarily) who maintained a devotion to the traditions of 18th-century classicism and antiquity at a time when many of his contemporaries were exploring and creating other movements and inspirations.

Belmondo notoriously did not want a museum devoted to his work. The impulse for the museum was likely less his own fame or talent than that of his famous son, the actor Jean-Paul Belmondo, who with his brother and sister donated the works in their possession to the form the base of the collection.

Presented on four levels, two open and bright, two containing dark wooden niches, the initial figures seen here hold the promise of a collection devoted to serenity and grace, as in his beautiful Marianne/La République dites d’Alger (1933). But before long it becomes evident that the figures, mostly busts, however technically skilled their execution, have instead been emptied of character, like a once elegant women who has been given anti-depressants in order to hold her pose.

The emotional void of Belmondo’s work as presented here is all the more striking in that Belmondo’s most viewed work—and deservedly so, seen by millions of visitors to Paris—is his copy (1964) of Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux’s joyous and orgiastic La Danse that decorates the façade of Paris’s Garnier Opera. Carpeaux’s original (1865-1869) is in the Orsay Museum.

In the absence of emotion or expression, the museum does reveal Belmondo’s excellent technique in sculpture and drawing as well as in his creation of designs for medals and medallions commissioned from Belmondo by the French national mint. Several sculptures by his contemporaries complete the collection.

The Paul Belmondo Museum makes for a charming sculptural walk-through, however the museum isn’t inspiring or significant enough to warrant coming to Boulogne-Billancourt for it alone. That isn’t to say that it should be avoided but rather that a traveler should consider coming out this way with a sense of discovery for the town as a whole, including this museum.

Boulogne-Billancourt has already earned a sweet if modest place as an afternoon’s excursion into the near suburbs thanks to the presence of:
– the Musée des Années Trente, a.k.a, M-A30, a museum dedicated to arts of the 1930s;
– the Albert Kahn Museum and Gardens. The gardens are comprised of French, English, and more uniquely Japanese gardens, along with zones presenting of three types of forest. The museum holds a vast collection of images from around the world commissioned from numerous photographers and film cameramen by Albert Kahn (1860-1940). Improvements to the garden and museum are currently underway’
– lesser attractions that can nevertheless lead a visitor to wander throughout the town, including the Paul Marmottan Library, devoted to the Napoleonic interests of its founder at the end of the 19th century, a brief stroll in the Cemetery of the West (Cimetière de l’Ouest), and assorted buildings from the 1930s. An mp3 audioguide to sights and buildings from the 1930s in Boulogne-Billancourtcan be downloaded free of charge from the town’s website.
– and the usual pastry and café pleasantries of Paris’s comfortable western suburbs.

Ile Seguin

Further reasons to venture this way will appear in the coming years now that one of the Paris region’s major projects is about to start taking shape: the redevelopment of Ile Seguin, a 28.4-acre island in the Seine that from 1920 to 1992 was occupied by a Renault factory.

The Ile Seguin project, unveiled in the summer of 2010, promises an island dedicated to commerce, culture, and green space. Its current model includes a 600-800-seat concert hall for classical music, a 3000-seat hall for amplified music (+ possible seating for 2000 more on the square out front), a music conservatory, an upscale hotel, movie theaters, shopping, art galleries, the Madona Bouglione Circus (1400 seats), and the Cartier Foundation, along with acres of covered garden, with the full project slated for completion by the end of 2017.

A magazine put out by Boulogne-Billancourt’s town hall puts a question mark beside the space of a possible Museum of the History of France. The idea of such a museum is highly politicized, with each political, ideological, and intellectual camp claiming that another will use it to promote its own vision of what defines France, so the question mark is quite substantial. Nevertheless, the mere possibility of such a museum being built beyond the limits of Paris is a sign that the capital is prepared to spread its goodwill.

Paris is expanding its horizons—and so should the visitor.

© 2010, Gary Lee Kraut

Musée Paul Belmondo, 14 rue de l’Abreuvoir, 92100 Boulogne-Billancourt. 01 55 18 69 01. Open Tues.-Fri. 2-6pm, Sat. and Sun. 11am-6pm. Entrance: 4.70 euros, free for under 16. Museum passes available for those also planning to visit 3 or 4 of the other museums in town.

The museum is a 15-minute walk from metro Boulogne-Jean-Jaurès. Or from that station take bus 123 to the Eglise Notre-Dame stop then walk 5 minutes from there. There’s also a free bus named SUBB within the town, with the Parc Rothschild stop being right near the museum.

Related article: For an article about recent developments on the eastern edge of Paris read Paris Rive Gauche: A 21st Century Left Bank.

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* * *

Parc de Sceaux, located several kilometers south of Paris, is unquestionably my favorite park. Lots of space: horizontal lines, basins, the canal… And vertical lines: waterfalls, fountains…

Le Parc de Sceaux, à quelques kilomètres au sud de paris, est sans conteste mon parc préféré. Beaucoup d’espace : des lignes horizontales, des bassins, le canal… Et des lignes verticales : les cascades, les jets d’eau…

The post Va-nu-pieds: Parc de Sceaux, A Family appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

The horror quickly faded for three reasons: the curators of the Orsay described the damage as an easily repairable tear; there are enough Monets in Paris to fill the temporary void; no one was about to buy or sell the painting; and, perhaps most importantly, the intruders, who were quickly found, immediately and adequately explained the reason for their actions: “We were drunk.”

Meanwhile, several days after the guy punched the Monet, some gal went on trial for kissing an all-white painting by Cy Twombly at Avignon’s Musée d’Art Contemporain four months earlier, an act that left a difficult lipstick stain on the canvas. If she’d simply punched the painting it would have been both easier to restore and easier to explain as a response to contemplating a white space, but girls will be girls.

The outrage in the case of the kiss was far greater than that of the punch, and it was self-aggrandizing outrage at that, caused not so much by the kiss itself but by so many people trying to analyze it and abstract large theories from it. Once the abstraction had begun everyone wanted a piece of the conversation.

First there was the kisser, who tried to defend herself by saying that the kiss was an act of love “that the artist would have understood.” Then the media and editorialists dove into the issue of the meaning of the kiss as through there were a real debate to be had. And the museum and its art handlers saw this as an occasion to put a self-promotional spin on their outrage by claiming that contemporary art itself had been attacked.

Only the artist—an American, I note, though without wishing to read much into that fact, so let’s just say a foreigner—stayed beyond the fray and simply hoped that his embraced work could be cleaned.

The woman’s “act of love” argument holds far less water than the “we were drunk” of the intruders in the Orsay, yet it excited the talking heads in the art world in France because it gave them the occasion to discuss the finer points of love, contemporary art, and vandalism. The directors of the museum promptly found a way to channel their outrage so as to take advantage of the attention of what they considered “the phenomenon of summer”; they set about mounting an exhibit entitled J’embrasse pas. The museum’s website proclaims that the exhibit, “was imposed following the proposition ‘Statement’ by Lawrence Weiner: ‘J’embrasse pas’ (I don’t kiss),” which is a bit like creating a war so as to sell an excess cache of arms, with conceptual art claiming that it had no choice but to fight back a misplaced kiss with freely advertised hype.

I can’t help but feel that the museum directors were secretly disappointed that the Twombly hadn’t been punched and the Monet kissed since not only is rejection the fight they were truly itching for but they’re likely to have more “I don’t punch” works available.

Thanks to the kisser’s trial and current “don’t kiss” exhibit the phenomenon of summer has stayed in the news longer than the phenomenon of autumn, but I thought the event in the Orsay much more compelling and revealing. For one, it shows that there’s still life in the old master Impressionist and not just merchandising.

The Orsay intruder seemed to indicate that there was nothing significant about the choice of the Monet for his fist. Seeing images of the vandalized painting, however, I couldn’t help but recognize the tear as (being imposed by) some kind of drunken, cartoonish, and/ or artful statement about museums. I am reminded of that moment in Raiders of the Lost Arc de Triomphe when Indiana Jones, menaced by a sword-welding hulk and finding no exit, widens his eyes to his trademark oh-shit expression then pulls out a gun and shoots the guy. Simply shoots the guy, I should say, just as the drunken intruder in the museum, annoyed with Monet’s impressionistic artifice, or at least by its being presented as something sacred and permanent, simply took out his only available arm (the other probably occupied by a beer) and punched the damn thing smack in its river.

When I get fed up with a book for similar reasons I just fling it across the room then pick it up later to continue reading, with the worst consequence being that I’ve lost my place. Since canvas art in a museum, unlike a book at home, isn’t our personal property, most of us manage to keep our punching (or kissing) reflexes in check visiting museums. Still, I must admit that there are times when visiting the attic rooms at the Orsay when I wouldn’t mind punching a few paintings myself. Something about the frames and the attic give me a claustrophobic urge to quit the art(ifice) and get some air.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of the hand and eye of Monet: the Cathedrals of Rouen and sun-dappled backyards at the Orsay; the fog, steam, snow, and late Water Lilies at the Marmottan; the bold, expansive Water Lilies at the Orangerie. Monet is an enormous presence in Paris. But sometimes one gets fed up with the ephemeral being presented as the eternal, tired of the pretense of the museum experience altogether.

* * *

Le Pont d’Argenteuil, the punched painting, depicts a view across the Seine to Argenteuil, two tight bends in the river from Paris. Painted in 1874, the year Monet and fellow artists exhibiting off-Salon came to be called Impressionists, the work uses a new language of art to speak about a new form of leisure: the daytrip from Paris.

There are two sailboats in the foreground, a café (guinguette) in the background, the titular bridge advancing horizontally over the horizontal river, and those three natural cohorts of impressionism and of Parisian day-trippers: water, sky, and vegetation. (The recent tear has the unintended genius of echoing both the sailboats and the flow of the river.) Though absent of people, it’s a scene that has all of the elements so dear to a day-tripping train-setter from Paris in the 1870s.

And to avant-garde artists of the time. Carrying their now-fangled paint tubes and box easels, Monet, Sisley, Pissaro, Renoir, and other sought their inspiration along the tracks. In 1869 Monet and Renoir spent a collaborative summer dabbing the light on the Seine around La Grenouillère, a floating café at Croissy-sur-Seine, about eight miles downstream of Argenteuil. Monet eventually settled in Argenteuil in 1872 and lived there for six years.

What may have triggered the punch-drunk intruder at the Orsay to pull his fist at the sight of Argenteuil Bridge may well have been the same trigger that brought Monet to Argenteuil in the first place: the desire to get away from the national museums and official salons and their high-nosed view of art. The intruder must have further found that plein air work didn’t make him want to see more plein air work, it made him want to be out in plein air.

Few painters have infused their outdoor scenes with more of such a sense of place—observed place—than Monet. But Monet was not a painter of wilderness or even of solitude outdoors. The natural space he framed is always a space where people work and/or play, even if those people are rarely seen. Ever since his style gained popularity, the natural effect of seeing his work has been for viewers to wants to enter into and to witness that space for themselves, which largely explains the success of his home at Giverny as a destination for artists in the early years, then for tourists.

In Renoir’s outdoor scenes, on the other hand, people are an integral part of the space, nearly a part of the foliage, nevertheless taking center stage. Viewing his work makes you want to attend a picnic or garden party or outdoor dance or at least sit out on a lively café terrace. They make you want to be a witness to human nature: the conversations, flirting, brushing up, silly laughs, tête-à-têtes, posing, absent stares, and seductive glances.

I’m thinking of course of two of Renoir’s most well-known paintings—Bal au Moulin de la Galette (1876) at the Orsay and Le Déjeuner des Canotiers (The Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1881) in the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C.

Bal makes me want to go people-watching in a café in Montmartre, where the windmill of the Galette that gave its name to the outdoor ball still exists. Déjeuner makes me want to go to déjeuner (lunch).

Les Déjeuner des Canotiers (Luncheon of the Boating Party) is one of Renoir’s last major classic Impressionist works, before he became a family man and his subjects got so rosy-cheeked and zaftig. It presents a gathering on the balcony of a restaurant at the end of lunch after a morning of rowing on the Seine, with the canotiers posing as weekend warriors showing off in muscle shirts and chatting up charmed and charming women, without any eyes meeting.

That scene takes place on the balcony of the restaurant Maison Fournier situated on an island at Chatou, easily reached (then as now) nine miles out from Paris. It’s less than a mile upstream from where Renoir and Monet came to work in the summer of 1869 and six miles downstream of Argenteuil. In 1881, having sketched and painted in various zones along the Seine, Renoir and his friends took a hanging out on this lively piece of island at Chatou known as a center for boating on the Seine. Day-trippers could rent boats and everyone eventually stopped into Maison Fournier. Renoir would occasionally ask for a room to spend the night. Monet, Degas, and Whistler, Flaubert, Maupassant, and Zola also stopped by along with numerous Parisians happy to leave the city for the day. The portion of the island that once attracted Renoir and the others is now called the Ile des Impressionnistes.

Getting a taste for the daytrip of Renoir and Parisian day-trippers of the time you need simply sit down for lunch at the very same Maison Fournaise, preferably on its very same balcony overlooking the river (see photo to right, second from top). The view across the river is distinctly business-suburban, yet the historical authenticity of the setting and the quality of the cuisine bourgeoise at Maison Fournaise make for an enchanting and easy detour from Paris for lunch. An adjacent museum honors the presence of artists and day-trippers here, mostly through reproductions and artifacts.

The greater folklore of the island though is found in the workshop across the square from the Maison Fournaise, where an association of canotiers and craftsmen continues the tradition of leisure boating along the Seine, sometimes by floating boat and more often by restoring them. The workshop is run by the Association Sequana which is dedicated to restoring (and constructing facsimiles of) old skiffs, gigs, canoes, and small sail boats from about 1880 to 1950, with a particular devotion to those high times of boating on the Seine at the end of the 19th century.

Donning straw hats and striped shirts, association members offer one-hour “Impressionist cruises” on weekend afternoons from May to October to other sites where easels were once set up along the river (see their website for exact schedule). Cruise or not, weekend or not, the curious travelers, particularly the traveler curious about boating, shouldn’t hesitate to peek into the boatyard/workshop and, language permitting, inquire about recent restorations.

After déjeuner at Maison Fournaise and meeting a canotier or two, you need only gaze into the shimming waters of the Seine to imagine the work and play of artists and day-trippers at the time. Among them, I can well imagine the guy who punched the Monet knocking back a few glasses along the riverbank and throwing stones into the water to annoy boaters. And the gal who kissed the Twombly, she could just as easily fall in love the veneer of a skiff and expect the Association Sequana to excuse the lipstick mark and to understand. I’m sure they would.

© 2007 by Gary Lee Kraut

Getting There
Take suburban RER line A1 from Paris to Rueil-Malmaison, which takes about 20 minutes. Ile des Impressionnistes is then a 5-minute walk straight in the direction of Chatou.

Idea for a Daytrip
Ten minutes beyond Rueil-Malmaison RER line A1 reaches Saint-Germain-en-Laye (see that article). The two can therefore easily be combined on a daytrip, i.e. lunch at Maison Fournaise and a glimpse in the workshop followed by a late-afternoon stroll-about at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. One might start off the day by viewing the Monets and Renoirs at the Musée d’Orsay (closed Monday) or by visiting the tremendous Impressionist collection at the Musée Marmottan Monet (open daily).

Useful Links

Restaurant de la Maison Fournaise: www.restaurant-fournaise.fr.

Musée Fournaise: www.musee-fournaise.com.

Association Sequana: www.sequana.org.

The above three share the same mailing address: Ile des Impressionnistes, 78400 Chatou.

Musée d’Orsay: www.musee-orsay.fr.

Musée Marmottan Monet: www.marmottan.com.

Links to images of paintings mentioned in this article

Monet’s Pont d’Argenteuil

Renoir’s Bal au Moulin de la Galette

Renoir’s Le Déjeuner des Canotiers / The Luncheon of the Boating Party

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