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~ A fairy-tale cottage by the Seine in Normandy

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Category Archives: Culture

Normandy Impressionist Festival 2020

06 Sunday Sep 2020

Posted by chaumierelesiris in Culture, France, Normandy, Things to do

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Art, Impressionism, Impressionist, Le Havre, Monet, museum, Normandy, paintings, Paszko, Pizarro, Pont-Audemer, Renoir, Rouen, Seine

Delayed by the Covid19 crisis, the Normandy Impressionist Festival is now bravely rescheduled to  4 July – 15 November 2020, at museums and sites all over Normandy. We managed to see three of the exhibits. 

First, at Le Havre’s striking dockside modern art museum MuMa, Electric Nights brings together impressionist images of cities lit by artificial lights.

You get a sense of the wonder as artists explored the effect of the new lighting and the scenes it opened up.

Next, to the Beaux-arts museum in Rouen, where part of the collection of coal magnate François Depeaux is being shown together. His paintings formed the foundation of the museum’s collection.

The Seine and its changing light is depicted in many of the images by both the most famous and lesser known impressionist painters.

Quirky paintings we loved: the collector’s young daughters by Georges Picard; and Monet’s turkeys.

Last to Pont-Audemer and a retrospective of contemporary impressionist Malgorzata Paszko at the tiny Alfred Canel museum. The theme of the festival is light and colour, and Paszko’s work celebrates and recontextualises the nocturnal blues and shifting horizons of the earlier impressionists.

The large canvases pop and shimmer and you can lose yourself to them – a rare pleasure, in 2020.

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Bells, Hedgehogs, Sardines

21 Sunday Apr 2019

Posted by chaumierelesiris in Culture, Food, France, Normandy

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chocolate, Easter, Food

Savour the variety of Easter chocolate on offer in France. From the multiplicity of French labels in the major supermarkets (the global brands compete for a look-in) to the local chocolate makers – every village has at least one – the choices are delightful, and affordable. 

This charming hedgehog – herisson- nestling in his bag of grass from our local boulanger-turned-chocolatier for Easter. 

Normandy is known for its seafood – moules, oysters, coquilles St-Jacques – so why not chocolate versions?

Hens are everywhere: a chocolate French hen is to be expected. 
No Easter Bunny in France. Instead, the bells are said to fly away from the churches and return with chocolate by Easter morning. So there are chocolate bells galore although I have no pictures. But here’s a cheeky Easter bunny from the supermarket. 

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St-Ouen, Pont Audemer

06 Sunday May 2018

Posted by chaumierelesiris in Culture, Normandy, Things to do

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architecture, churches, gothic, Pont-Audemer, Romanesque, Rouen

The church of St-Ouen, at the heart of our busy local market town of Pont Audemer, is currently undergoing a 2.5M EUR restoration.

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After several years under scaffolding, the difference is now visible around the front entrance and the tower.

IMG_4853Take a moment to look inside this cool, ancient edifice. The oldest, Romanesque sections around the choir were built between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries.

IMG_4862The gate and north tower were constructed starting in around 1485, and the striking gothic nave with aisles and side chapels were build between 1505 and 1515 by Rouen architect Roulland le Roux, who also worked on Rouen cathedral. The south tower was never completed due to financial difficulties.

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Christmas in Pont-Audemer

31 Sunday Dec 2017

Posted by chaumierelesiris in Culture, Normandy

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Christmas, Pont-Audemer, Reveillon

Normandy is magical at Christmas, and Pont-Audemer is no exception. The main streets sparkle with overhead lights, and each shop and half timbered building is laden with traditional decorations. The butchers and bakers and fishmongers work long hours to deliver the Christmas and Réveillon feasts. And it’s not just the streets that light up. Here, Père Noël has had to borrow a boat to get the job done along one of Pont-Audemer’s charming canals.

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Giverny, On and Off Canvas

21 Sunday Feb 2016

Posted by chaumierelesiris in Culture, Les Iris, Normandy, Things to do

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Art, Gardens, Monet

If you’re heading to Normandy and interested in gardening, a visit to Monet’s garden at Giverny will be on your bucket list. It’s an easy hour’s drive from Les Iris and a wonderful day trip.

For those in London before April 20th 2016, a great warm-up is Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse at the Royal Academy. Bringing together an immense number of works by Monet and his contemporaries, the exhibition examines the role gardens played in the evolution of art from the early 1860s to the 1920s.

It’s a blockbuster exhibit that brings many works together for the first time in living memory. Book ahead and expect crowds. The exhibition is free for under 16s, and the free Art Detectives guide kept our children engaged.

And if you can’t make it to London, the Royal Academy have produced an informative series of videos introducing artists’ gardens in northern France –  Monet at Giverny, Pierre Bonnard’s garden at Vernonnet in Normandy, and Henri Le Sidaner’s garden in the medieval village of Gerberoy, Picardy.

Monet in garden    Monet 2.PNG

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Gemma Bovery – A Norman Story

06 Saturday Sep 2014

Posted by chaumierelesiris in Culture, Food, Normandy

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Books, film, Flaubert, Gemma Bovery, Madame Bovary, Normandy

We’re getting excited about the forthcoming French film of Posy Simmonds’ comic novel, Gemma Bovery. Set in Normandy, it’s a modern retelling of the classic French novel Madame Bovary – with a heavy dose of English irony thrown in. The book is great on the English and the English in Normandy, on our relationship with the food, the countryside and the French. The film is released on September 10th in France, and stars Gemma Aterton. Here’s the trailer.

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Finding things

25 Friday Jul 2014

Posted by chaumierelesiris in Culture, France, Les Iris, Normandy

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brocante, Les Iris, mandolin, Pont-Audemer, shopping

What’s better than an attic full of the things someone once treasured, then grew up or turned in another direction, and now here’s the thing, dusty and worn yet special in some way just waiting to be discovered. Ebay thrives on this market of lost things but it isn’t the same, is it. There isn’t that physical thrill you get when you’ve sorted through the junk to find the very thing, shined it up with the palm of your hand, and imagined it into your life.

mandolin, brocante

 

Maybe that’s why the brocante still thrives in France, this most sensory of cultures being reluctant to part with the thrill that comes with the hunt. Here are our latest finds, from consignment brocante type shop La Grange de Janna, just relocated from Honfleur to Pont-Audemer and helpfully open every day. Furniture, books, electronics, audio, vintage and modern – it’s all here in a cavernous warehouse.

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At Les Iris the walls are fairly bare and we’re always looking for pictures that connect to our lives here in Normandy, while small enough to suit the cottage’s dimensions. The miniature oil of a vase of flowers will be perfect. The fashion plate will remind our daughters not to complain about the clothes they have to wear.

Mandolin Masspacher

And the mandolin – an impulse purchase, redolent of Picasso, southern summers, Shakespearean serenades. It needs re-stringing and a polish, but is in good shape, and made by Masspacher in Paris. A fine old thing will get new life.

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Irises at Les Iris

05 Monday May 2014

Posted by chaumierelesiris in Culture, Les Iris

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Flowers

Last month in Amsterdam we admired Van Gogh’s irises.

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This month, it’s the real thing. Irises at every turn. Yellow by the side of the road, indigo along the drive and deep purple and bee-attracting at the end of the garden. The photos don’t quite do them justice.

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Halloween Candy USA vs France

28 Monday Oct 2013

Posted by chaumierelesiris in Culture, Food, France

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candy, France, Halloween

Guess which is which!

American Halloween CandyFrench Halloween Candy“What’s this?” cried the French children, seemingly disgusted. But the basket was nearly emptied, and it was the American candy, not the beautiful French candy, that went first as the children gorged themselves.

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Ships Ahoy!

16 Sunday Jun 2013

Posted by chaumierelesiris in Culture, France, Normandy, Travel

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Armada, France, Normandy, Rouen, Ships

Every five years, tall ships gather in Rouen for the Armada. They then sail back down the Seine together to Le Havre. Here are some of the boats, which you can visit, this weekend in a very crowded Rouen.

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