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| Leaving Perigord |
We locked up the Perigord gite early in the morning and waved goodbye to an area that had surprised us with a whole other side of France. Gabrielle Chanel was born and raised in the department neighbouring the Dordogné; it was in her biography that I read of the push
after WWI to establish Parisian French as the national language. Chanel's birth tongue was banned from her home department of Correze, as were other department dialects. School attendance was made compulsory and every child was taught French. Years before, Chanel had moved to Moulins and perhaps learnt the Parisian French from the military men that frequented the club she performed at to supplement her seamstress income. Moulins is in Allier, land of the Bourbons, it is only two departments north of Perigord but as we drove further north on the A20, the differences in land use, building stone and landscape were almost as immediate as crossing the department border. The Dordogné does seem very isolated and quite different from our normal images of France.
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| A Biography from Sis |
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| When the A20 was clear. I've decided not to put Granny's photos of the crash site in. |
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Renior's portrait of Monet 1872 - print in house
Original in Musée Marmottan, Paris, France |
There was a nervous energy in the VW. Willow had arranged the purchase of tickets to Monet's garden in Giverny, one use entry any day.
http://giverny.org/gardens/fcm/visitgb.htm Giverny is a little village just across the Seine from Verdon which is 45min by train from Paris. The last entry time was 5:30pm, at least it wasn't a Tuesday when it is closed. Would we be able to rattle up the 470km+ in time? Less than an hour onto the motorway the traffic ground to a crawl, then a stop. We had 2.5hrs to spare according to the GPS so I tried to 'Keep calm and Carry on,' as is popularly asserted in England. Eventually the traffic began to crawl again, Michael thankful that the VW was an automatic and eventually we passed the crash site where a truck had gotten itself wrapped up in the armco barrier and a couple of flat vans. Our empathy for the drivers was soon swamped in the exhilaration of being in 6th gear charging down the motorway.
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| Hay bale in the Dordogné |
As we zoomed along, the hay bales on the side of the road reminded me of Monet's haystack series, I think I like them more than his waterlilies. It is hard to imagine his yearning to paint outdoors to be considered strange and improper. Development in technology - the camera and tubes of premixed paints, allowed his generation to break from the traditional role of artists. For the haystacks he had 8 canvases that he took to the field each season for several days. He started early and painted until the light shifted then worked on the next throughout the day. The next fine day he took out those time labelled canvases and began from where he had left off before, swapping from canvas to canvas as the light shifted. I don't know how many days he went out each season but his first exhibition of stack paintings showed 15 finished works. This prompted a couple of well known writers of the time to wax lyrical.
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For Gustave Geffroy, they represented "the poetry of the universe in the small space of a field.., a synthetic summary of the meteors and the elements." And, for Desire Louis, the viewer was "in the presence of sensations of place and of time in the harmonious and melancholic flow of sunsets, ends of day, and gentle dawns." http://www.artic.edu/aic/resources/resource/380 '
We stopped for coffee at some very crowded services just past Orleans - no time to stop in to see this historic city. A few hours later we pulled into another service stop for diesel and lunch. After Granny tried to pay for the fuel a second time(there was a service point in the courtyard where the business had already been transacted) she found a tin with Perigord forest animals to keep bits and pieces in once the biscuits were eaten. After a brush with Paris and a fifth toll (antipodean credit cards don't work so make sure you have cash!) we were off the motorway systems and managed to find a park within spitting distance of the still open Monet Trust. Yay!
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| Monet's House - inside the gardens. |
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| Great natural structure |
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| Monet loved his chooks |
The queue was very long so we were very glad to be able to dodge it with our prepaid tickets. I showed the entry guy the email on the screen of my phone, he sent us down to the group booking section but when we got there they had just closed and refused to give us access because it was 4:06pm. We trudged back up to the front door and the lovely man apologised for not realising how late it was. He had to write down the long numbers of each of our e tickets - It would have been easy to have done this for him before as he was having to deal with all sorts of languages and ages as interpreter for the ticket booth lady at the same time. The euphoria of finally entering this iconic garden and immediately recognising the rose arbour scene and Monet's pink house after carrying the pessimistic tension of something happening to prevent it was a strange physical sense. Luckily the conveniences were close to the entrance.
This property is the result of Monet's determination to paint for profit as well as natural investigation and beauty. As a young boy he struggled to see the point of doing things just because he was meant to and had a terrible time at school. His first profit from art was from selling cartoons in the window of the local art store. The drawings were of local residents in the port town of Le Havre and he made more money through this than Boudin, the full time artist that Monet credits with being his first inspirational teacher, did at the time.
After Monet's mother died, his aunty supported his desire to become an artist rather than following his father into her husband's business. She paid for him to go to art classes in Paris where he eventually meet his muse, Camille Doncieux. Pissarro, Renior, Sisley and Bazille all became good friends and joined Monet with his outdoor painting. His first work exhibited at the Salon was derided by many, with someone voicing a witty comment: "the landscape gave an impression of what he imagined it really looked like". Surprisingly Monet liked this description as he and his friends saw no point in mimicking reality but were trying to find the light and colour more intensely by hiding the subject a little. The idea stuck and the Impressionist movement was named.
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Eduoard Manet helped Monet and Camille into a property across the Seine from him in Argenteuil - I'm not sure if this area would have been considered Paris in his day. He often painted water scenes from boats and made himself the floating studio seen here in Manet's portrait (Right - Eduoard Manet 1874)
Renior captured his 'outdoor painting' by his Argenteuil garden (Left: Auguste Renoir 1873)
Images from http://www.monetpainting.net/monet_by_others.php |
Although Monet had a lot of early success he struggled to make any money and was supported by patrons. He refused to marry Camille until he could support her financially. They lived together in Parisian poverty, Monet's dad was disgusted and refused to help them. Monet dutifully attended his military service but was discharged from Algiers with health problems. When the Franco Prussian war began Monet and Camille took off to London. Here Monet met the man who would be his dealer(art not drugs!) for the rest of his career. He also painted some lovely blue Thames pieces that make you feel as if the cool fog of London is settling on your face.
On his return to Paris he started making a steady if humble income. The friends they had moved in with went broke and Monet found himself trying to support both families. Camille became ill during her second pregnancy. After the birth, a fearful winter and lack of decent food saw her demise. Monet wouldn't let her be moved from the bed she died in until he had painted her one last time. The difference between her young healthy self as 'Woman in Green' and the death portrait demonstrate both the maturity of Monet's style and the effect of poverty on a young woman.
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| Alice - 1878 Carolus-Duran |
Monet hated poverty and worked hard to lift his family and friends out of the abyss. Eventually he started making money. Ernest Hoschede died but his wife Alice decided to remain with Monet and raise their two separate families together at the Giverny property Monet bought. They eventually married. Still to come was the creation of the pond and fashioning of the bridge that reflected the popularity of Japanese prints among his friends. The rest I guess is history, countless biscuit tins and mint packs with 'The Waterlilies' motivating unnecessary purchases. I clearly remember being picked up from Longburn College by Mum and Aunty V for a weekend visit to the Monet exhibit tour in Auckland. The impact of seeing the real thing after admiration of printed copies in books has given me a love for art galleries that I fear Willow and Petal don't yet appreciate.
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| The girls think gardens are more happy making than galleries - Granny was lost on her own contemplative journey |
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| Here at last |
I can still feel the excitement as we walked down the rows of flowers looked after by the trustees of Monét's Giverny property to the same parameters. He planted recklessly, not heeding the super organised, controlled fashions of the time. Friends and strangers gave him new and strange plants that he moved about until they found a place to call home. His drive to understand colour harmonies motivated crazy planting patterns but were always guided by his instinct for balanced structure - the height of plants, garden furniture and trees all created a dizzying effect so that as we walked around, every blink seemed to bring into view another perfect frame of colour and light. Not surprisingly our many clicks on our cameras have produced nothing as stunning as Monet's eye through his brush. What a privilege it was to walk those paths.
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Left: Water lilies 1905, original in Museum of Fine Arts Boston Right: Our photo of the motivation
On completion of the water garden, Monet apparently said - 'I'll probably be painting this for the rest of my life.' |
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| Nymphéas |
Inside Monet's pink and green house his kitchen bright blue and yellow dinning rooms have been recreated. His collection of Japanese art lines the hallways. Prints of some of his paintings appear on the crowded walls. The kitchen table is long and designed for casual long lunches with the many friends and admirers that used to visit. At one stage there were so many U.S. students camping and boarding in the village that the local cafe started selling Cola and American food. Monet's fame and encouragement of young talent inspired many. He also had a foul temper and was know to rip and burn canvases that did not go according to his vision. Some of these fragments were rescued by Alice and the kids and are now worth a lot of money.
Monet’s 1906 “Nymphéas” was sold at auction in Sotheby's for £31 700 000 in June this year.
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| Too good not to touch |
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| Finally found Granny staring at the sky in the pond - how did he capture that? |
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| Competing with the Lilies |
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| Colourful combinations |
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| No wonder Monet painted the same subject so many times - how can one snap capture it all? |
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| Through the garden back to the house |
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| Happy paths |
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| A little more respect thank you |
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| Camera wars: Guess who think they got the best shots! |
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| Exit Image |
The attendants started calling closing time just before 6pm so we looked through the extensive gift shop and left making a big tick against that list of places to see before our time is up.
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| Leaving relaxed and renewed |
How to get to the Garden:
Giverny is a tiny place across Le Seine from Verdon. From Paris book one of the many day tours or catch a train on the Rouen line from the Metro exit at Grandes Lignes. The Vernon station is about 5km away so take a taxi or the shuttle. If driving, punch the address (84 rue Claude Monet 27620 Giverny) into your SatNav.
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