Giverny, On and Off Canvas

21 Sunday Feb 2016

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

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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.

Night and Day

08 Tuesday Jan 2013

Posted by chaumierelesiris in Food, Normandy

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Armada, Art, home decor, Impressionist Festival, Le Havre, oysters, Rouen, Seine

This year we did it the Norman way. The local oysters came from the supermarket, of all places–but only after a protracted discussion with the fishmonger about just how fresh the oysters were, and how to store them, and what size is best (2 is larger and better than 3). Oyster knives were secured, space was made in the fridge, and the last evening of the year was celebrated with oysters, champagne, foie gras and prune-stuffed pork loin (based on a Jane Websterrecipe).

I’d wanted to do it this way for a long time–you see the oyster boxes piled high at market in December–but didn’t know how or have the confidence to do it alone. We had keen company: she had holidayed in Brittany as a teen, and remembered the men wearing oven gloves as they swore at the boxes of recalcitrant oysters. He claimed to have shucked oysters “once or twice”–know that an Englishman always understates his skill. The oysters were prepared, kept cool over ice and served with lemon, vinaigrette and scallions. Perfect.

I went a bit Martha Stewart on the New Years Eve table using bits of ivy, mistletoe and rosemary from the garden. The silvery tablecloth is from Zara Home, and extra sparkle was provided by our guests in the form of a hostess gift (as if the shucking weren’t enough), these gorgeous festive napkin rings from The White Company.

The next morning the Seine at the end of the garden was as perfect as it can be. It had gone all Monet, reflecting the trees and clouds so that even the most unpainterly among us couldn’t miss the mirror effect.

In 2013 two of the major events in Upper Normandy will focus on the Seine. The Impressionist Festival from April to September will put on six exhibitions and many activities on the theme of water in Impressionist paintings. The Rouen Armada in June will host tall ships along the Seine from Le Havre to Rouen. No better way, then, to start the year than on the banks of this great, beautiful river.

The most famous garden in Normandy

13 Wednesday Jun 2012

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

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Art, Flowers, Gardens, Giverny, Monet, Normandy, paintings

Giverny–where Claude Monet lived and painted for 43 years–is certainly the most famous garden in Normandy, perhaps in all of Europe or even the world. It was here that he created the water garden with its iconic Japanese bridge that he painted over and over and which hangs, in reproduction, on a million institutional walls.

A visit to Giverny, however, doesn’t start with the lily pond, but with the rather fabulous–and previously unknown to me–Clos Normand, his magnificent wildflower garden.

The garden, which fronts his house, is laid out in corridors of colour: one purple, one yellow, one pink. Flowers and rose arches rise on either side. Even though it’s crowded – on a midweek afternoon during school season we waited 20 minutes for our tickets – you can lose yourself wandering through the fragrant lanes.

We visited in early June, and the flower garden was bursting with colour, all poppies and peonies and hollyhocks and irises.

All those poppies recall the Monet print that hung in my childhood nursery, the one of a girl and her mother walking through a poppy field, the girl wearing a boater not unlike my school uniform hat, and the mother wearing a scarf and carrying a parasol.

The gardeners were busy at work, tending to all that wildness.

If the flower garden offered more than I expected, then the water garden was slightly underwhelming. The two gardens are intersected by a busy road, and there is noise from the traffic on the road. And to be fair the day was grey, the light flat. The pond is really very small, and not as lovely as it is painted in oil and hanging on the walls of the world’s great museums. It reminded me of visiting the most famous gardens in Japan. Like this one they were perfect on a small scale, and elbow to elbow as crowds of tourists sought just the right picture for their holiday blog.

Monet’s house is worth a look. It has been renovated recently, and rooms on both floors are open for viewing. The bedroom overlooks the gardens. The painter’s bed is curiously small for two people, and the ensuite bathroom is luxurious. What is known as the yellow kitchen is in fact a dining room with a large table, with a smart blue kitchen beyond it. It seems that the Monet family enjoyed their entertaining–and who wouldn’t, in such a spot?

The children brought along The Magical Garden of Claude Monet, which takes a child and a dog on a tour of house and gardens. They enjoyed discovering the places shown in the book – especially Monet’s boat.

There are a number of official and unofficial websites dedicated to Giverny, of which we found the best for visitor information to be the Claude Monet Foundation website.

Town Mouse, Country Mouse

12 Saturday May 2012

Posted by chaumierelesiris in Culture, Travel

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Art, Bow, dog, Graffiti, Lee Navigation, London, Olympic Park, Olympic Stadium, Olympics, restaurant

This is a blog about living and travelling in rural Normandy and I try to stay fairly close to the subject. I’ve gone off-piste from time to time. I was star-struck by an encounter with Blur’s Alex James, and I enthused about a friend’s chalet in Vaujany. Today I’m going to stray again. If this blog is all about rural life, I’m going to write about its opposite.

Last weekend we spent a day wandering around East London – a helter skelter patchwork of old industry and new development, a resolutely urban space crawling with builders and testers and security guards and snapping tourists like me as it enters the last weeks before the London Olympics. (For a neat travel account of things to do in East London, see the New York Times’ 36 Hours in East London).

We walked along the Lee Navigation, a system of canals built out of from the River Lea that once served industry, and are now the heart-center of Olympic development. This provided some excellent views of the main Olympic stadium, where sound checks were underway all afternoon.

Here is one of the entrances to the Olympic park. You can see old industrial buildings next to a secured gate into the Park. I love the graffiti under the canal bridge: IMAGINE WAKING TOMORROW AND ALL MUSIC HAS DISAPPEARED. Our dancing-singing-violin-playing daughters tried to imagine what that would be like.

It’s been decades since the canals have carried working barges, but there are houseboats all along the sides. You might think a houseboat is a romantic, bohemian way to live cost-effectively in London–that’s not always the case. Even if the houseboat is affordable, mooring prices and terms vary widely. Behind the houseboats here, you can see the kind of smart apartments that have appeared all over this once industrial area.

Someone has set up these miniature sculptures ‘watching’ the construction of the Olympic Park from across the Lee Navigation. (Is this a good moment to mention that there is a French connection to the Olympics. It was a Frenchman, Pierre de Coubertin, who in 1894 proposed in a speech at the Sorbonne the idea of revival of the Games and establishment of the International Olympic Committee.)

For lunch we made our way into Bow, where Roach Road was unexpectedly buzzing with Bugaboos and LandRovers–surely day visitors from Islington and Dulwich trying to snatch a bit of artistic urban cool just like us? Look at the Olympic Stadium looming behind.

With children and dog in tow, we were delighted to discover that the cafe at Stour Space is energetically child and dog friendly. This is certainly not the case in much of London–I have yet to find a dog-friendly cafe in Fulham. The excellent brunch menu included pea soup and bacon sandwiches.

Stour Space is hosting a retrospective of works by local printmaker James Brown. This version of a William Morris quotation, which can be bought at the V&A, particular spoke to us:

Since we’re talking opposites today, I had to take note of the requisite anti-Olympics graffiti just along the street.

There’s much beauty in the contrasts here. Of course there is: it’s the differences in life, after all, that provide richness and texture. The town mouse and the country mouse need each other, and make each other, in their contrast, more beautiful.

Le Havre in Rain and Sun

07 Monday May 2012

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

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architecture, Art, Auguste Perret, Easter bells, Eglise Saint-Joseph du Havre, Food, Le Havre, Market, Musée Malraux, Oscar Neimeyer volcano, Renoir, sardines

Le Havre probably isn’t top of your list of things to do in Normandy. It certainly wasn’t top of mine–even though it’s on the Unesco World Heritage list. For me, Le Havre has always been a ferry port on the way to somewhere nicer, famous for having been bombed to bits by both sides during World War II.

But my ever adventurous husband kept encouraging me to go. He wanted to know where all the boats that pass by the end of our garden were coming from; and he was interested in seeing the largest container port, and second busiest overall port, in France. So we left behind the bucolic blossomy Easter week countryside and drove off in search of urban grit.

We arrived in a shower of rain, found parking, and ran into the nearest shelter, a large concrete doorway. I stumbled in, looked up, and then had one of those blinking-into-the-gloom moments that you get in the great medieval cathedrals like Notre Dame, Salisbury or Reims. Except here I was in a dramatic modernist space, the Eglise Saint-Joseph du Havre, made entirely from reinforced concrete. Built in the 1950s, the cathedral was designed by Auguste Perret, the architect who led the reconstruction of Le Havre after the war. It’s quite hard to describe the effect of stepping into this cathedral, and pictures don’t do it justice. The concrete is hard and cold and ugly, and yet the overall effect is uplifting and awe-inspiring. If you do one thing in Le Havre, go there.

The rain stopped, the sun came out (every day in Normandy contains about 7 days of weather in other places) and we headed towards the port, stopping along the way at the covered market for sandwiches and where we admired the traditional Easter bells and other chocolate on display.

Dotted around the port are some interesting sculptures, and this unusual Oscar Neimeyer designed volcano, which houses a cultural centre.

Oscar Niemeyer Volcano in the rain, Le Havre

Then on to the Musée Malraux, known as MuMa, and its excellent collection of impressionist art in another modernist space that’s more attractive inside than out.

Musee des Beaux-Arts Andre Malraux Le Havre

There are works by Boudin, Monet, Dufy, and many of the impressionists; I particularly liked the several portraits by Renoir, as well as the way the museum windows let the changing Normandy light right inside.

Along the seafront from the museum, boats were being taken out of dry dock by men with a small crane. We walked out along the long pier. Retired couples out for a stroll greeted us warmly, and a class of small student sailboats bobbed about at the end of the pier. Looking back was a rather lovely view of the port, smart new apartments, and the Perret cathedral tower.

Le Havre harbour and Auguste Perret tower

Do look out for the seafront shop, La Belle-Iloise, which has walls and walls of these brightly coloured tins of sardines. What wonderful gifts.

Le Havre seems to me something like a beautiful easter egg hidden in an old bag, full of delightful surprises that it’s worth taking the time to savour.

Boudin in Normandy

28 Saturday Jan 2012

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

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Art, Boudin, Honfleur, Le Havre, Normandy, Normandy art museums, paintings, Trouville

Do make time for the Musée Eugène Boudin if you find yourself, as we recently did, in Honfleur on a rainy winter’s day. Boudin (1824-1898), a native of Normandy, is known for his paintings of the outdoors, and was a great influence on Monet and the Impressionists.

The museum is spacious and the collection not too large; allow one to two hours. The collection includes work by pre-Impressionist and contemporary Norman artists, as well as displays of traditional Norman costumes and artefacts. The heart of the collection is the Boudin paintings.

Woman with a Parasol on the Beach might be my favourite. You see the same lady later in Monet, and in Winslow Homer on the opposite side of the Atlantic. There’s the wonderful contrast between the dark formal dress and the sweep of beach and wind-pushed clouds. Is she talking on her mobile?

Boudin worked a great deal on the Normandy coast, especially at the fashionable resorts of Trouville and Deauville. He painted a number of scenes similar to On the Beach at Trouville between the 1860s and 1890s.

Boudin is extensively collected around the world, and I have created my own Boudin in Normandy collection at the lovely Artfinder.

I’ve written elsewhere about visiting Honfleur and Étretat. Here Boudin paints The Jetty and Lighthouse at Honfleur and The Cliffs at Etretat.

This painting of the Seine near Rouen looks so much like the view of the Seine from the bottom of the garden at Les Iris. I wonder where Boudin painted it.

I love the business of this scene outside the Casino de Trouville. Look at the children, and the dogs, and the tipped-over rush chair at the front.

It seems to me that being a C19 pre-impressionist painter was an excellent gig: you got to hang out in the loveliest places like The Beach at Trouville and Deauville. Check out those bathing machines.

Now here is a view that has changed. Le Havre has been extensively re-built and is on the UNESCO World Heritage List for its post-war architecture. Boats have changed too, although every 5 years or so, an armada of tall ships gathers on the Seine in Normandy. The next gathering is in June 2013.

And here’s a view that hasn’t changed, apart from a few parasols. Life goes on in the same way year after year on the beach: the resort wear, the sailing lessons, the children ducking in and out of the white-capped waves, their screams of delight echoing down the years.

New Years Day in Étretat, Normandy

14 Saturday Jan 2012

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

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Art, beach, Etretat, Impressionists, Monet, New Years Day, Normandy, paintings

Is there a good way to start the new year? Celebrate midnight in style, and you wake up with a headache and a mess to tidy up, and at least one resolution broken in the first twenty-four hours. This year, with guests to entertain, we decided the headaches had to be ignored. And the mess: we decided to leave it behind.

But where to go? New Years Day was both a Sunday and a bank holiday. Northern France was closed for business. Not a museum or a restaurant to be visited. There were many small children in our party, so a walk in the forest wouldn’t be easy. That left the beach. Perfect.

I like beaches best in the dead of winter. Preferably stony, with the wind whipping salt through my hair, and a moody slate-grey sea. I am not the bikini type: for one thing, my skin fries in the heat, and another is I get bored just lying around. The beach we settled on for New Years Day was at Étretat.

Étretat isn’t the closest beach to Les Iris, but the 45 minute cross-country drive on narrow farm roads through open fields and villages is pretty. Étretat is famous for its alabaster cliffs, or falaises, which were painted by Monet, Courbet and Boudin among others. There is plenty of parking in town; park as close to the seafront as you can. Two famous rock formations are visible from the town. As you face the sea, to the left is the Porte d’Aval. There is a path to hike up to the top, from which a further falaise can be seen. At the top there is also a spectacularly situated golf course.

The Cliffs at Etretat after the storm, by Gustave Courbet.

We decided to hike in the opposite direction, up the Porte d’Amont. There were some steep steps, but overall it looked a shorter climb for the children.

Etretat, beach and the Porte d’Amont, by Claude Monet.

It took us about 30 minutes to climb to the top. There are tables overlooking the town on the way up which would make a lovely picnic spot in warmer weather. On the clifftops, cows were grazing. There is a small church. There are no fences: hold on to your children.

A few minutes along from the church there is a path that goes a little way down towards the sea from which you can look northwards. The views of the cliffs are timeless. You feel that you have been here before, that you’ve walked into a painting.

The town itself is attractive, with typical Norman architecture, and restaurants and boutiques (all closed, of course, on New Years Day).

There is a small casino, a restored covered market in the main square, and a war memorial.

But the action is centered on the seafront. The paved boardwalk has these shapely lampposts all along it. Or you can go right down onto the pebble beach, like the children did, and play in and out of the vigorous waves.

And should you find yourself here on New Years Day, bring your bikini/trunks. Because the only way to start the new year in Étretat on New Years Day is with ‘le grand frisson’ – the big chill. Baptize yourself in the frosty Atlantic waters and you start the year with a clear head and the confidence that you’ve kept at least one resolution. Then top it off by sharing a glass of champagne on the beach.

Normandie : Le grand frisson du nouvel an | Paris Normandie.

For more information about Étretat and other things to do in Normandy, visit Normandy in the Press.

Off-Season Honfleur

19 Saturday Nov 2011

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

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Art, Carousel, Honfleur, Normandy, Quebec, restaurant, Travel

A few miles west along the Seine from our chaumiere is Honfleur, one of Normandy’s most picturesque fishing villages. Honfleur has long been important to Normandy, as a safe harbour during the Hundred Years’ War, then as a centre of maritime trade. French explorer and diplomat Samuel de Champlain, the founder of Quebec City, left for Canada from Honfleur in 1608.

Today Honfleur attracts many tourists in the summer months. We have visited only in spring and fall, when it buzzes gently with weekending couples, and there’s enough watery sun shining for the restauranteurs around the rectangular harbour to keep a few tables outside.

This restaurant, right on the harbour, looks perfect for colder days: they provide a blanket on each chair to pull around your shoulders. We had a wonderful meal at the tiny Bistro des Artistes, which is on an upper floor of one of those tall buildings by the harbour. The menu is short but all freshly made. You access the restaurant from the street behind, and get a table by the window for a fabulous and unobstructed view out over the harbour.

Honfleur is a lovely place to wander through. In the spring and summer there is an old-fashioned carousel by the harbour. (We are becoming aficionados of carousels in Normandy: there is another in Le Touquet which I have written about here.) There are many interesting shops to explore – gourmet food; incredible chocolate shops with elaborate seasonal creations in their windows; and a host of art galleries.

We haven’t needed to stay overnight in Honfleur, but at this B&B, the proprietors were very kind when we needed to find a toilet for a toddler, quickly. It is set off the street around a charming courtyard, filled with flowers.

There are many museums and historical sites in Honfleur. We haven’t visited most of them yet: we have been having too much fun eating and walking around. There are markers in the harbour recording the departure of Samuel de Champlain’s fleet. Quite striking and worth a look is the Eglise Sainte Catherine which, unusually for a large ecclesiastical building, is made entirely of wood. It was built by shipwrights in the 15th century, and the interior does have a nautical feel.

We were fascinated by this public lavoir or wash house, fed by natural streams, up on the hill behind the harbour. It was closed on the day we visited, but is apparently still in use for much of the year.

Update: Here is a useful guide to Honfleur from The Telegraph: Honfleur, France: a cultural guide, 15 November 2011

The Art of Normandy

15 Thursday Sep 2011

Posted by chaumierelesiris in Culture, Normandy

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Art, Etretat, Monet, paintings

I’ve been having fun with Artfinder, which lets you create your own art galleries. Here’s my collection of paintings of Normandy. For the static version, go here.

Most of the paintings are nineteenth and twentieth century. Artists love the shifting light of Normandy. Here’s a taster.

The people at Artfinder are onto something. It’s great fun to play curator.

chaumierelesiris

~ A fairy-tale cottage by the Seine in Normandy

Tag Archives: Art

Giverny, On and Off Canvas

Night and Day

The most famous garden in Normandy

Town Mouse, Country Mouse

Le Havre in Rain and Sun

Boudin in Normandy

New Years Day in Étretat, Normandy

Off-Season Honfleur

The Art of Normandy

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