La Toilette: The Invention of Privacy, in which la toilette refers to acts of washing and grooming, opens with an early Renaissance tapestry from the Cluny Museum—The Bath—depicting a blonde noblewoman clad in her headdress and jewels (but nothing else) enjoying a refreshing summer-time dip in the garden, accompanied by servants, musicians and attendants of both sexes.

The tapestry is nine-tenths fantasy since bathtubs had been taboo for the general population since the late Middle Ages, when contemporary physicians stigmatized immersion in water, deemed to be an unhealthy substance laden with mysterious “venom.” Dry cleaning was the norm for centuries, with perfume and ointments applied with bits of cloth.

Most significantly, personal grooming—no matter how intimate—was truly a public affair until the dawn of the eighteenth century when it (gradually) became less acceptable to entertain guests while seated on a bidet. Pictures of semi-clothed ladies at their toilette and make-up tables (significantly, the show includes no pictures of men powdering their wigs) went underground, like some of the bawdy François Bouchers from the 1740s that the museum displays.

Beginning with delicate images (Dürer, Primatice, the School of Fontainebleau) and barreling towards Georges de La Tour’s remarkable Woman Catching a Flea, the show segues into portraits of better-known bathing beauties like Pierre Bonnard’s Marthe (painted in an era when dedicated bathrooms became havens for private, relaxing escapes) and winds up with ironic, post-modern photos and c-prints signed by Alain Jacquet, Erwin Blumenfeld, and Bettina Rheims.

All in all, the French clean up quite well.

© 2015, Corinne LaBalme

La Toilette, Naissance de l’Intimité, Feb. 12-July 5, 2015, at the Musée Marmottan Monet, 2 Rue Louis Boilly, 16th arr. Metro La Muette or RER Boulainvilliers. Closed Monday.

The post La Toilette: The Invention of Privacy appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Tell a Parisian that you’re heading south into deep France, la France profonde, and, after warning you that you’ll miss Paris after one day, he’ll eventually concede that one can eat well there, mention some magnificent chateau or landscape and finally confess that he has fond memories of once visiting with a friend or lover or cousin. But tell him that you’re headed to the deep France of the north and he’ll look at you with complete bewilderment. His only recollection of France’s northern border is likely to be a collective memory of German invasions.

So when I told friends in Paris that I was going to the French Ardennes, an area that accompanies the Meuse River as it pokes into Belgian forests just west of Luxembourg, I got nothing but a blank stare followed by a stunned “Pourquoi?”

Actually, one friend had been Charleville-Mézières, capital of the French Ardennes. “There’s a beautiful square there,” he said. Still, he thought I needed a better reason to go.

I did: beer. For three days I would set out to meet producers and purveyors of craft beer in the area.

But before taking a swig I had to deal with the ghost of poet-cum-explorer Arthur Rimbaud.

Part 1 is found here.
Part 2 is found here.
Part 3 is found here.

Travel advice : Giverny, with images of Monet’s garden in October
When visitors without much interest in Monet follow the paths around his pond and through his garden they inevitably find them lovely. For those curious about the artist, his sustained form of Impressionism and his family life, the garden and lily pond are magnificent. But are Monet’s House and Garden worth the daytrip? This article explains the interest of adding a stop at the nearby village of La Roche-Guyon on a trip to Giverny or further into Normandy.

A clear view of Paris
The City of Paris has begun investing in the fight against love locks on its famous bridges by placing glass panels that bring back the stunning views that attracted people to place locks there in the first place.

Happy travels always,

Gary

Gary Lee Kraut
Editor, France Revisited

The post The October Issue appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

* * *

Over the years I’ve visited Monet’s gardens and lily pond at Giverny at various times during its open seasons, late March to early November. I’ve witnessed it in their various stages of bloom and rebloom, and each time their expression is different. That was, after all, Monet created them and returned to them so often in his work, especially in his 70s and 80s. I visited Giverny again recently in early October (the photos in this article are from then) and was once again impressed by how it had maintained its lushness and color into the fall. The season’s calm, flower-friendly weather had certainly helped.

When visitors without much interest in Monet or in his work follow the paths around his pond and through his garden they inevitably find them lovely. For those curious about the artist (1840-1926), his sustained form of Impressionism and his family life (two children with his first wife who died shortly after the birth of their second child, cohabitation then marriage with a long-time friend who had six children of her own after their father had abandoned the family), the garden and lily pond are magnificent. With the naked eye rather than through a camera lens they are extremely telling and will invariably send a visitor back to Paris with intentions to revisit Monet’s work at the Orsay Museum and more particularly at the Orangerie Museum and at the Marmottan Monet Museum.

I often feel uplifted after a visit to Giverny, both for the view of the (controlled) nature itself and for my own interest in the man and in his work. Though I’d rather visit with sunny skies or white clouds, overcast weather also allows insights into Monet’s world and outlook. I’m less fond of a rainy-day visit, but from beneath an umbrella I’ve come to appreciate Monet’s gardens at Giverny more than Louis XIV’s at Versailles.

Yet I often find myself less than encouraging when advising travelers on whether or not to trek out to Giverny, 45 miles west of Paris, on a daytrip. I’m concerned that the weather will be bad (Giverny is, after all, at the entrance to Normandy, which is not known for sunny days) and/or the crowds overwhelming, and that even on a pleasant day they will spend 90 minutes or more getting out there only to find Giverny lends itself to a 45-minute visit.

I know, there’s more to do in Giverny than visit the house and garden and lily pond; there’s the Monet boutique (as you can imagine, Monet’s work lends itself to appealing merchandising) and some pretty (yawn) art galleries, there’s the enjoyable and occasionally insightful Giverny Museum of Impressionisms, whose restaurant is a decent place to lunch, and there’s the relatively little visited tomb of Monet in the village churchyard. So it is possible to spend a couple of hours here. Also, though often ignored, the nearby town of Vernon, which is where you stop if coming this way be train, gives a nice and ordinary sense of small-town France for those who know little of that life. Still, I’m just not always convinced that it’s worth the time for those who have little of it in Paris. As I say, I’m a big fan of Monet’s garden and lily pond. But I don’t think that making it a destination in and of itself is right for all those who say they would like to see them.

However, add La Roche-Guyon to the day and I’m sure to encourage a visit to this area. La Roche-Guyon is a village along the Seine just 5 miles to the east Giverny, on the opposite side of the Normand border. Though the castle of La Roche-Guyon is mostly empty inside (that is, the public parts are since a portion is private chateau, which belongs to the La Rochefoucauld family, is still inhabited and used for artist residencies) it nevertheless gives a glimpse of some strong points in French history, including the importance of its strategic site overlooking a loop in the Seine (a 12-century dungeon is accessed through stairs cut into the cliff) to its stories from the Enlightenment and the Revolution (the 18th-century portion and rehabilitated garden) to its WWII history (this was Rommel’s headquarters during the lead up to D-Day 1944)

Maybe you don’t feel like climbing many steps up to the dungeon or don’t have enough time to visit the castle at all. Still, the view is impressive. Furthermore, La Roche-Guyon makes for an easy-going lunch stop at Les Bords de Seine, which offers one of the best inexpensive lunch deals you’ll find anyway. Or the edge of the Seine is a wonderful spot for a picnic made from bread and cheese and such purchase in the village.

You’ll need your own wheels, however, to visit both Giverny and La Roche-Guyon, either a rental car or a bike rented in Vernon, which is why so few visitors to Giverny ever make it to La Roche-Guyon, despite its proximity.

I especially recommend the Giverny – La Roche-Guyon combo to those flying into Paris and wishing to drive directly to Normandy to visit the D-Day Beaches. It makes for a nice break in a tiring day between the airport and whatever hotel you’ll be staying at in Normandy.

Alternatively, you can stop at both Giverny and La Roche-Guyon on the way back from Normandy, but the timing can be more difficult if returning in the afternoon since you’ll want to avoid driving into Paris during rush hour.

I write this with fond memories of my own recent October visit to both villages on the route between Charles de Gaulle Airport and Bayeux.

© 2014, Gary Lee Kraut

The post Near Paris: The Giverny – La Roche-Guyon Daytrip Combo appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

That may have been intended as a sound bite since Monet did in fact work in a studio as well as outside. Two studio spaces that he used subsequent to that interview can still be seen at his home in Giverny. He also installed something of a studio on a boat while there. Nevertheless, the point was well taken: nature and the outdoors were where Monet lived as an artist.

And the Seine was not Monet’s studio alone. It also served at times as the studio for many of his fellow Impressionists—e.g. Renoir, Sisley, Pissarro, Caillebotte—as well as for those who preceded and came after the heydays of Impressionism of the 1870s and 1880s, such as Courbet, Corot, Turner, Jongkind, Saurat and Signac.

A new book, La Seine Impressionniste, at once guidebook and small encyclopedia, revisits those “studios” along the Seine and its surroundings. In it authors Monique and Georges Lucenet present a step-by-step view of the 471 miles (776 km) of the river and the sights along the way, from its source in Burgundy to its estuary in Normandy.

This handsomely illustrated 464-page paperback reveals the artistic and general history of the sights and space that inspired or attracted (or were merely easily accessible to) the Impressionists and others as they developed what I think of not so much as an art of nature but an art of place. The text, in French, is accompanied by 160 reproductions of works coming from more than 40 museums. The book also tells of the literary figures of the time who were also attracted to these riverbanks.

La Seine Impressionniste by Monique and Georges Lucenet, 24.90€.

* * *

But you don’t read French, you say? Or you’re tired of the Impressionists?

Here then is another way of regarding the banks of the Seine as it passes through Paris.

The video below, entitled Notre Train Quotidien (Our Daily Train), examines the contemporary relationship between the left and right banks of the Seine.

Our Daily Train was filmed between the metro stations Gare d’Austerlitz and Quai de la Rapée. That’s where metro line 5 crosses over the Seine, mid-way between the zone of the historical Left Bank/Right Bank at the center of the city (arrondissements 1 through 7) and the Left Bank/Right Bank developments of the past 25 years on the eastern edge of the city (arrondissements 12 and 13).

The video was filmed by Gonzague Petit Trabal, with music by Rémy Klis. It is posted on France Revisited with permission from the authors.

Grab a glass of wine or your relaxation drug of choice, place the video on full screen mode, and let yourself get transported back and forth between the left and right banks of the River Seine.

© 2011, Gary Lee Kraut

See also on France Revisited: “The Art of Punching, Kissing and Lunching: Monet, Renoir and the Impressionist Island at Chatou” and “Paris Rive Gauche: a 21st Century Left Bank.”

The post The Seine of the Impressionists and of Our Daily Train appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

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.

The post A Brilliant Obsession: Color at the Marmottan Monet, Black at the Pompidou 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

The post The Art of Punching, Kissing and Lunching: Monet, Renoir and the Impressionist Island near Paris appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

U.S. President Obama, French President Sarkozy, English Prime Minister Brown, and Canadian Prime Minister Harper visited the Landing Zone in Normandy on Saturday but I beat them to the punch, spending a few days there earlier in the week before the crowds arrived. The photo log below shows many (but not all) of the main D-Day sights and cemeteries that one can see over about three days if setting out from Paris.

In a separate article I outline a series of possible itineraries for visiting the D-Day Landing Beaches of Normandy, but for now I invite you to join me on a portion of my own itinerary last week.

I lucked upon a string of sunny days, hence the blue skies in the photos, which is a rarity in Normandy, as anyone who has read about the events of June 1944 knows. Though my own trip also included a visit to Deauville and Honfleur before visiting the Landing Zone and Le Mont Saint Michel, Saint Malo, Le Mans, and Chartres afterwards, this photo log focuses on sights along and inland of the Landing Zone of June 6, 1944.

However, I can’t help but begin with images of Monet’s Garden and House at Giverny since it’s only a slight detour on the way to Normandy. In a sense, the day was too blue when I took the picture below left of Monet’s water lily pond since there was nothing in the sky to be reflected in the water as there often was in Monet’s work. The garden, below right, was in full bloom.

The road to Normandy from Paris more or less follows the Seine downstream towards the English Channel. After Giverny I backtracked upstream along the river to visit La Roche Guyon. I planned it that way because if visiting both it’s advisable to arrive early at Giverny. Furthermore, La Roche Guyon makes for a better lunch stop between the two.

La Roche Guyon naturally rings far fewer bells than Giverny, but it’s an interesting stop for a WWII tour because the chateau in the photo below left is where German Field Marshall Rommel set up his headquarters when he was appointed by Hitler to oversee and reinforce defenses along the Atlantic Wall. Many of the Landing sights that you’ll see in Normandy were personally inspected by Rommel from January to May 1944. The chateau of La Roche Guyon has a 1000-year history that I won’t go into here. The main marks from Rommel’s period are the casements where ammunition was kept, which now present an exhibit about that period. Otherwise, the chateau is a wonderful mishmash of periods with a beautiful view over the Seine. I typically think of Giverny as a pain for a daytrip on its own from Paris, but I do like the idea of a day combining Giverny with La Roche Guyon, though it’s necessary to have a car to do so or good biking legs from Vernon. La Roche Guyon is a pretty Seine-side town. The photo below right is a view upstream from the town.

Approaching the D-Day sights from the east, i.e. with the British and Canadian Landing Beaches, the first stop is Pegasus Bridge, which was rapidly taken by British airborne troops arriving in three gliders on the night of June 5-6, 1944. The bridge was taken in order to cut off German troops—and especially tanks—that might arrive from further east once the landing started and to prevent them from crossing the Orne River. The bridge that now goes over the Orne (below left) is a higher tech replica of the original bridge, which has been moved onto the grounds of the Pegasus Memorial Museum a few hundred yards away, which tells about the British airborne landing.

The Merville Battery was also captured by British airborne troops arriving by parachute and glider on the night of June 5-6, 1944. This was a major German battery between the coast and the right bank of the Orne whose guns were capable of firing on Sword Beach, the easternmost of the Landing Beaches. I won’t tell here the heroic and bloody story of how it was taken, but I will say that after reading about it and visiting the site several times before I was fortunate to hear first-hand last week when I met Alexander Taylor, who landed on a glider that night.

The Landing Zone is worth a visit at any time of year, but those who visit in the days surrounding June 6 may well encounter visiting some of the men who took part in the landing. During the 20 or times that I’ve visited the Landing Zone, beginning in 1992, I’ve had the opportunity to speak with visiting veterans on various occasions, but this is the first time I actually stood at the very spot where a man landed on D-Day and had him describe the event to me as he lived them. When I asked him his name also told me his dog tag number, 22543202. Here is Alexander Taylor, 22543202 standing tall at the Merville Battery, which he helped capture and render unusable at the age of 20.

I am sorry to say that I gave the Canadians short shift on this visit. Though I did stop at Juno Beach (where pit bulls and rottweilers are not allowed, I note in case you were planning on traveling with one), I didn’t visit the June Beach Center, Canada’s Second World War museum, which is by the beach at Courseulles-sur-Mer. Nor did I visit the Canadian Cemetery, which is a few miles inland at Riviers. Apologies to my Canadian readers. If anyone has a photo of the Canadian Cemetery I would like to post it here.

Arromanches is the town at the center of Gold Beach. It was here that the British built the artificial harbor known as a Mulberry. Some remnants of the harbor still remain just offshore. (The photo below, with clouds, was one that I took last year on June 6.) The D-Day Museum at Arromanches shows how the harbor was built and how it operated, along with other displays about the landing and the various nationalities that took part.

The only German battery along this coast with its canons still visible are those at Longues-sur-Mer. The photo below is one of four 155mm gun emplacements at Longues that were a danger to the landing of British troops at Gold Beach as they could fire up to 12 miles. Visiting the complex you’ll also see the position of its command center by the cliff and other concrete elements of the Atlantic Wall. Three of the four canons were put out of commission by naval fire within the first hour of the landing, but one was occasionally operational until about 5 p.m. The garrison here of 184 Germans surrendered to the British the following day.

Americans tend to visit only the American Cemetery but I think it’s important to visit those of other nationalities so as to have a sense not only of their loss and sacrifice but of their approach to their war dead. Here’s a section of the British Cemetery at Bayeux.

The American connection with Normandy begins with D-Day, but the British connection goes back much further, beginning with William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, who took the crown of England after the Battle of Hastings in 1066. William is buried at the Abbaye aux Hommes (Men’s Abbey) at Caen.

The tapestry was made in about 1080 to be hung during Christmastime in the Cathedral of Bayeux. Inside the cathedral a plaque honors British troops who fought in the WWI.

In visiting the American sector, i.e. Utah and Omaha Beaches and related sights, I generally recommend starting out to Utah Beach, the westernmost beach, then visiting your way back towards Omaha rather than the other way around. On the way to Utah you might first stop, as I did, at the German Cemetery by the village of La Cambe. This cemetery contains the largest number of dead of all of the cemeteries in the region, over 21,000, including 207 unknown soldiers buried beneath the mound that dominates the cemetery.

I neglected to take any pictures at Utah Beach but here are pictures of the nearby village of Sainte-Mère-du-Mont, right, where men and women were playing soldier and parading around with their wartime jeeps. You’ll come across these collectors (I suppose that’s the word for them) at any time of year but especially around the anniversary of D-Day. Hundreds were gathering for the 65th anniversary this weekend. Few of them are American or British. I mostly heard French and Dutch last week.

I was in a little bar in Port-en-Bessin one evening when a jeep sporting a U.S. flag parked right out front. Out popped a big man with a long gray beard and a short plump women, both dressed in U.S. army uniforms, looking like Mr. and Mrs. Claus on a Bob Hope special. They entered the bar and the man demanded beer. That’s all he said, “Beer,” and he held one hand about 18 inches above the other to show that he wanted it big. The bartender asked where he was from. He said, “Czechoslovakia,” and he meant it.

The photo bottom right is of Sainte-Mère-Eglise, the town taken by American airborne troops on the night of June 5-6 and securing the bridges and roads of the western edge of the Landing area. The parachute hanging from the steeple is a wink to paratrooper John Steele who got stuck there. The Airborne Museum at Sainte-Mère-Eglise is quite good and has an excellent introductory film to both the overall landing operation and the specific events in and around Sainte-Mère-Eglise.

The guns at Pointe du Hoc were a danger for the landing at the two American beaches, Utah and Omaha, and even though the Rangers who climbed the cliff discovered to their surprise that the guns had been moved inland and weren’t operational, the site is nevertheless one of the most dramatic of those in the Landing Zone. In addition to the drama of the events of June 6-8, 1944 that took place here as the Rangers took and held the battery, the site also reveals the construction and workings of the German battery complex and the extent to which it was bombed. The bomb craters here, unlike most craters elsewhere along the coast, have not been filled in. The top photo below shows the Pointe du Hoc and the cliff that the Rangers scaled. The bottom photo shows some of the bombed out landscape.

The American Cemetery is about 15 minutes east along the coast from Pointe du Hoc. The cemetery overlooks Omaha Beach, the bloodiest of the five Landing Beaches. I’ll be writing about Omaha Beach, the cemetery, and all else that’s mentioned above in a separate article. For now I just point out the three images below: a view of the cemetery (top left), the memorial to American youth rising from the waves (right), and Omaha Beach (bottom left).

As noted above regarding Alexander Taylor, 22543202, encountering men and women somehow related to the events of the war—whether veterans, their children, Normans who lived through it or their children—is enormously enriching in exploring this zone. Below is a photo of Bernard Lebrec, whose apple farm produces the three main alcoholic beverages produced in the department of Calvados: cidre, pommeau, brandy. His farm, originally purchased prior to the war by his grandfather, is located in Englesqueville la Percèe, a village between Pointe du Hoc and the American Cemetery. You might stop in for a tasting, and if you do so be sure to inquire into the wartime history of the farm. As with many of the large farmhouses along the coast, that of Mr. Lebrec’s grandfather’s was requisitioned by the Germans during the war. Then, after the landing, it was occupied by the Americans. The American 147th Engineer Combat Battalion made it their headquarters and built an airstrip in the family’s apple orchard in the early days of the Invasion of Normandy. I photographed Mr. Lebrec below standing in front of the monument erected on his property in honor of the 147th.

(c) 2009, Gary Lee Kraut

How can you travel in the spirit of France Revisited?

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Gentler methods of acquisition are now required to enrich Paris museums, and none have contributed more in the past century to developing the city’s extraordinary art culture than bequests and inheritance.

While the three great national museums—the Louvre (Western art until 1850), the Orsay Museum (1848-1914), and the Museum of Modern Art at the Pompidou Center (20th century)—are enough to keep first-time visitors to Paris busy, a dozen other major collections of art and sculpture, presented in magnificent settings, also claim world-class status and the attention of the return traveler.

Six museums in particular have joined the ranks of Paris’s most noteworthy due mainly to bequests from artists, their heirs or collectors of their work. Each offers a fascinating glimpse of how a private collection can not only enrich a museum but also become the foundation of one. In each of these museums you’ll find yourself drawn beyond the expression and beauty of the artwork and into the lives of the painters and sculptors and/or those of the collectors who honored their work.
(Numbers below follow numbers on map.)

1. Musée Rodin
In 1908, Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), the master sculptor of his era, proposed to donate his entire collection to the state if France would accept to maintain as his museum the Hôtel Biron, an 18th-century mansion around the corner from Napoleon’s Tomb at the Invalides. Rodin had been renting a portion of the mansion as a workspace and thought the setting ideal to present his work for posterity. It is indeed.

The ground floor presents some of the defining works of Rodin’s artistic development, including the first major piece that brought him both acclaim and scandal, The Bronze Age (1877). The plaster cast is so life-like that Rodin was accused of having molded it directly on the model. From that point on, his work was dominated by an expressive power in which figures are stripped of anything superfluous, even body parts, in an attempt to express something essential, as in the powerful, headless stride of The Walking Man or various works in which hands alone reveal sentiment or character or yearning.

The second floor provides an insightful look into Rodin’s creative process through his studies for monumental works, such as The Gates of Hell, which ripened from a commission received in 1880 to create a door for a museum of decorative arts into a highly personal project that captivated the sculptor for the rest of his life. The final bronze versions of Rodin’s monumental works, including The Gates of Hell, The Burghers of Calais, and The Thinker, have been planted in the surrounding garden, which offers one of the most artful and romantic strolls in Paris.

2. Musée Picasso
The curators of the French national collections have long known that in matters of acquisitions where there’s a last will there’s a way, and since 1968 one of those ways is a law authorizing the state to accept, in certain cases, art in lieu of cash to pay an inheritance tax. The law was first used to its full effect in settling the estate of Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), thereby creating a windfall that enabled France to constitute a collection of tremendous proportions in one fell swoop.

Housed in a 17th century mansion in the historical Marais quarter, the museum displays a lifetime of Picasso’s artistic creation, from The Barefoot Girl (1895), revealing his precocious talent at the age of 14, to vibrant paintings created when he was 90. Room to room, period to period, theme to theme, one never loses sight of the man behind the work, whether Picasso is exploring material, volume, line, man, woman, or Minotaur.

This collection is so extensive that by the time you’ve reached his later works you may wish that he would have put down his brushes and played with his grandchildren. A final room reveals how Picasso, in his final years, returned to essential themes in his life in paintings such as Seated Old Man, The Kiss, Mother and Child, The Family, and, from the year before his death, The Young Painter.

3. Musée Jacquemart-André
You needn’t crave the sight of 18th-century French art and furnishings, works of the Italian Renaissance, or paintings by Flemish and Dutch masters to enjoy the splendor of the Jacquemart-André Museum, for one doesn’t come here only to see the collection but also to be a guest in the home of Edouard André (1833-1894), heir to a banking fortune, and his wife Nélie Jacquemart-André (1841-1912), whom he met in 1872 when hired to paint his portrait.

The vast reception rooms meld 18th-century refinery with the pomp and splendor indicative of the 1860s, the period when the mansion was designed as a showy society bachelor pad for André in the prestigious Monceau quarter. The home became the couple’s joint project after their marriage in 1881. With a buying budget that surpassed that of the Louvre, no children, nothing so mundane as a job to tie them down, and a knowledgeable passion for the work they set out to collect, the Andrés were among the great collectors of their era. Works by Rembrandt and Van Dyck decorate the library. A monumental staircase rises to a magnificent fresco from Venice by Giambattista Tiepolo (1740s). The tearoom occupying the couple’s dining room allows you to partake in the mansion’s luxuriance as though you’d been invited to one of the Andrés’ fetes.

The audio guide is an excellent touring companion, giving explanations not only about the works themselves but about the couple’s passion for art, their extensive travels and buying expeditions, their fortune, and their marriage. We learn, for instance, that theirs was “a marriage of reason,” though we’re left to assume as we enter their remarkable “ItalianMuseum” displaying works of the Italian Renaissance that the reason had something to do with the complementarity of his passion for Venetian art and her preference for Florentines.

4. Musée Nissim de Camondo
This second great mansion in the Monceau quarter was also built by the heir to a banking fortune, yet it tells a different story, that of Moïse de Camondo and his passion for French decorative arts of the 18th-century.

The audio guide is again indispensable in examining this extraordinary collection of tapestries, paintings, porcelains, wood paneling, and cabinetry, since one not only learns about the decorative works themselves but about the fortune and fate of the de Camondo clan, a Sephardic Jewish family that had been one of the major bankers in the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century. Two de Camondo brothers settled in Paris in the 1870s, living side by side overlooking Parc Monceau. Their respective sons, Isaac (1851-1911) and Moïse (1860-1935), were the collector generation.

While Isaac gathered Impressionist works that are now mostly in the OrsayMuseum, Moïse hunted down increasingly valuable pieces from the reigns of Louis XV and XVI. No sooner had Moïse inherited his mansion in 1910 then he had it torn down to create this “modern” showcase-home for the collection. From the grand staircase and the great drawing room to the precious porcelain room by way of prized cabinetry such as Marie-Antoinette’s needlework table, the home speaks of family fortune as well as a private fashion for 18th century art and fine craft.

The home also echoes with tragedy, for beyond the luxury lies the extinction of Moïse de Camondo’s family line, revealed in photographs on the upper floor. His only son, the collection’s intended heir (for whom the museum is named), died in air combat during WWI. During WWII, his only daughter, as well as her husband and children, were deported at Auschwitz.

5. Musée Marmottan Monet
Paul Marmatton’s collection of paintings, furniture, and bronzes from the Napoleonic era, presented in his home, would simply make for a pleasing stroll in a luxury quarter on the western edge of the city were it not for subsequent donations that allowed the Marmottan to become a mecca for Monet fans.

In 1957 the museum inherited paintings by Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Sisley, and Renoir from the daughter of an early collector of their works. Among them was Impression, Sunrise (1873), Monet’s seminal painting from which the Impressionist movement drew its name. In 1966, the Marmottan hit pay dirt when, inspired by the previous endowment, Monet’s son Michel bequeath the museum 65 of the artist’s paintings, making this home to the world’s most extensive collection of works by Claude Monet (1840-1926). Subsequent gifts have reinforced the museum’s stature as a major repository for Impressionist works.

While the Napoleonic-era decorative arts shine throughout the museum and while a world-class collection of 15th- and 16th-century illuminations and the works of other Impressionists also vie for attention, the Monet room has become the heart of the museum. What is remarkable in scanning 55 years of artistic quest in a single room is Monet’s relentless and constant desire to transcribe onto canvas the ephemeral impressions of light and reflection, particularly as seen in the large grouping of Water Lilies, a theme that often absorbed Monet during the last three decades years of his life.

6. Musée de l’Orangerie
When one thinks of an artist unwilling to let go of his brush in his 80s one often thinks of Picasso the prolific. But the depth and breadth of Monet’s series of vast Water Lilies painted at that age are a wonder to behold. Placed as though along the contours of a pond in which the spectator stands, the series of eight canvases is presented in natural light in the former orangery or citrus greenhouse of the TuileriesPalace, which is where Monet intended them to be presented.

The Orangerie earns is place in an article about collections, however, because underground it houses the astounding Jean Walter and Paul Guillaume collection. A bunker-like setting, partially dug into the garden, provides a surprisingly warm and unobtrusive background against which the examine the humanity expressed in 144 works dating from the late 19th and early 20th centuries (Renoir, Modigliani, Cézanne, Rousseau, Picasso, Matisse, Derain, Soutine).

The works in both sections of the museum can lose their force when the space is overwhelmed by crowds. Better to visit late afternoon during the sunny seasons or after 3 p.m. in winter. When at its least crowded this is this among the most captivating museums in the city.

© 2005, 2006 Gary Lee Kraut

Practical information
1. Musée Rodin
77 rue de Varenne, 7th arr.
Metro Varenne
Open April-Sept. 9:30am-5:45pm, gardens open until 6:45pm. Open Oct.-March 9:30am-4:45pm, gardens open until 5pm. Closed Mon.
Tel. 01 44 18 61 10
www.musee-rodin.fr

2. Musée National Picasso
Hôtel Salé
5 rue de Thorigny, 3rd arr.
Open 9:30am-6pm (until 5:30pm Oct.-March). Closed Tues.
Tel. 01 42 71 25 21
www.musee-picasso.fr

3. Musée Jacquemart-André
158 bd Haussmann, 8th arr.
Metro Miromesnil
Open daily 10am-6pm. Tearoom open 11:45am-5:30pm
Tél. 01 45 62 11 59
www.musee-jacquemart-andre.com

4. Musée Nissim de Camondo
63 rue de Monceau, 8th arr. (D on map)
Metro Villiers or Monceau
Open 10am-5pm. Closed Mon., Tues.
Tel 01 53 89 06 50.
http://www.lesartsdecoratifs.fr/en/

5. Musée Marmottan Monet
2 rue Louis Boilly, 16th arr. (E on map)
Metro La Muette.
Open 10am-6pm. Closed Mon.
Tel 01 44 96 50 33
www.marmottan.com

6. Musée de l’Orangerie
TuileriesGarden, 1st arr. (F on map)
Metro Concorde
Open 9am-12:30pm for groups with reservations, 12:30-7pm (9pm on Fri.) for others. Closed Tues.
www.musee-orangerie.fr

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