C'Obs: Honfleur - flower of the Seine

A Honfleur morning - the dock is too short for a ski! Image from 'Tour Normandy' site.

"I want to show you Honfleur, I want to show you the light."

Edward Boudin supposedly said this to his friend, 15yr old Claude Monet, in an effort to encourage him away from his 'amusing' caricatures to the real art of painting outdoors.

Through photos of our visit to this charming little port town, I'll try and do the same.

Left: Gramps wandering down the Quai-Sainte-Catherine last summer, 9amish.
Right: M at the end of the same street this February, 4pmish.
Same camera, vastly different light.

My favourite Honfleur bakery.

On our way home from the Normandy beaches and visiting the Bayeux tapestry last summer, we dropped into Honfleur to pick up coffee and breakfast on our way to the Chunnel in Calais. I had chosen Honfleur as our stop after seeing it listed as the location on so many Impressionist land and seascapes. Still I was not prepared for the shock of beauty at the end of the road as we came to the Vieux Bassin. All of us stood and grinned with daft limpid eyes - for a moment incapable of raising the camera arm. I cannot say why a concrete walled, rectangle of water with a few boats floating upon it, surrounded by a wall of timber buildings, cafe umbrellas and ancient stone was able to conjure this reaction. It must have been a trick of the light. After a desperate wander, trying to suck in as much as we could through our eyes, we left; promising ourselves that one day we would return.

Last summer - the little dog was still there in winter, her owner spoke only French so without Willow we were a little stuck but we found that her name was Lucy. They had breakfast at Restaurant La Marin with us each morning.

And we did! Yay! Well M, Petal and I did. Willow was in Paris with two of her friends celebrating her 18th birthday; Granny and Gramps were visiting Hokitika, another little seaside town on the west coast of Sth NZ.

From the window of our room first morning - we were so lucky that it didn't rain at all.
Top left: Bells of the Town Hall, Bottom left: Town Hall in the background. Tricky to keep Charlie from leaping across my knee and onto the restaurant awning below! Right: St Etienne - deconsecrated church now a marine museum.

February is winter, so of course the light was very different. Although a couple coaches still dropped in tourists, the streets mid afternoon were much quieter than our 9am summer stop off. A reasonable trade I think; space to see for the cold and the light was still incredible.

Left: Behind the Bell Tower. The close buildings would be lovely and cool in summer - mossy in winter but still so pretty.
Right: Ropes and masts of sailing and fishing boats in the dock, Town hall behind. Light frames pictures for you.

Our room is the right 1st floor window above the red awning left of the
art gallery in center shot without an awning.

Honfleur sits in a wedge of flat at the side of the estuary of the great river Seine and between two steep hills . Paris is about 200km up river. As the sun pops over the eastern hill(Côte Vassale) the town sparkles and the colour from the western drop, behind Côte de Grace, lights up all the panes of glass along the eastern edge of the marina. The sun was thin and watery but because it bounced from sea to pane, off white stone, sails and clouds it seemed so much brighter than an overcast day in Cambridge.

Left: 4pmish Right: 10amish

We stayed in a room above one of the restaurants lining the marina (La Chambre du Marin). The one window looked right across the water to the triple bells of the Hotel de Ville (Honfleur's Town Hall). The three bells sounded every half hour then the largest chimed the strikes of each hour. St Catherine's clock tower standing apart from the church on the road behind our room competed every hour but we didn't hear anything from the dome of St Leonard or from up on the hill behind us where Notre Dame de Grace sits. The original, built by Richard II Duke of Normandy in thanks to God for saving him from drowning in a shipwreck out in the estuary, slid down the slope in a landslide and was replaced in the early 1600s. Both St Leonards and de Grace are full of painted murals and are made of stone.

Right: Exiting our little room. Left: coming out onto Rue du Dauphin through a sneaky skinny door.

The buildings on the western side of the bassin are soo tall they appear to be toppling forward but they are firmly attached to the hill behind and each building has a double entrance. Most have two owners, the bottom half has access to the bassin, with their ground level rooms filled with restaurants, shops and galleries. The top half open to the Rue du Dauphin in front of St Catherine's and their 'ground level' rooms are shops and galleries. Our room was accessed by a steep narrow staircase that ran from a tiny door in la Marin restaurant up to Rue du Dauphin, Five other residences used this rope bannistered tunnel staircase for access as well.

Even inside a long skinny room with one window there is plenty of light. Left - Petal waking late despite the bells.
Right: Petal admiring her new French knife. Rear - Charlie is very happy that we remembered to bring his dinner.

Honfleur lights itself up at night well too.
Left: St Catherine's Bell Tower, market square and Hotel du Dauphin behind our building.
Right: l'écailleur retaurant for dinner one night. Great view, steak and cheeses - charcoal caramelised onions though.

St Catherine's is the only completely wooden church in France. It was built to thank God for the departure of the English after The Hundred Years War c1460. French skirmishes in the 1450s all but destroyed the Kent town of Sandwich, which is now its sister town in the UK.

Top: the right 'hull' of St C. Right:the church is lined with modern saints as well as the Holy family.
Left: Chandelier and Baptistery.

The church was named for the Greek martyr, Saint Catherine, a scholar and a beauty. Legend says that she converted 1000's of pagans to Christianity, most of them losing their lives for it soon after. She was tortured but was allowed visitors. The legend says she converted the Emporer's wife, who visited her in the dungeons, who then lost her life for not worshiping idols. Catherine refused to marry the newly widowed Emperor Maxentius, so he signed her death warrant for the torturous 'wheel'. When it broke at her touch he had to resort to beheading her with an axe. Joan de Arc declared that Catherine was one of the Saints who advised her but no historical evidence can be found to corroborate the legend. St Catherine's College in Cambridge was founded on her saint day, November 25: the story endures.

Left: Bergognone's imaginings of St Catherine's mystical marriage to Christ,1490. She looks like Willow's Greek friend.
St Catherine's wooden church. The shingles are made from Chestnut wood.

Local shipwrights built the double hull roof of the church but then decided that to put the traditional bell tower atop would invite the disaster of fire from lighting strikes (says something about Norman weather!) They decided to build the bell tower across the square from the church with living quarters for the bell ringer below. I'm not sure when the small spire on the roof of the church was added. Legend has it that nobody in the town wanted the job of bell ringer (or the accommodation) so the Mayor told the local drunk that he either took the job or he had to leave Honfleur. The drunk took the job, apparently developed great skill and married a deaf girl!

St Catherine's Bell Tower:1.J.B.Jongkind 1886 (notice the different pillared front of the church) 2. C.Monet 1867 3.M's photo.

A warren of little streets wind around the gentle slope from St Catherine's to the hill behind. Many of these host shops and galleries. Popular souvenirs are local cheeses, ciders, nougat, honey, jams of all sorts, caramels, jewelry and art. Petal dreamed that she would buy a tasseled leather bag and voila an embossed example waved to her from a sale rack outside Bou&Bou, it was a mistake going inside to pay though - so many other temptations; really quirky jewelry from a Parisian artist. The Musee Eugene Boudin promised the display of impressionist pieces completed in the area but alas a sign informed us that it would not open again until May.

Some of the goodies around town.

A five minute walk beyond the disappointment took us to a five star spa Hotel (Ferme Saint Simeon) that used to be the modest farmhouse where Eugene and his friends often paid for their stay with a pastel sketch. The steep road parallel to this takes you up to Notre Dame de Grace. The view across the mouth of the Seine to Le Harve is spectacular.

Left: Ferme Saint Simeon with Petal and Charlie trespassing on their lawn.
Right Top: View of the Normandy Bridge whose deck is suspended 60m above the Seine. Each pylon is 215m high. It costs €5,40 to cross the 2141m each way. The old mill stone from the farm was probably still operating in Monet's time.

Back down to town, close to the public parking area, off Boulevard Charles 5 (where we paid around €12 for 24hrs) is a light house. As I was walking Charlie past early one morning it struck me as odd that such a short lighthouse should be so far inland. I also remembered a Seurat pointillist work, of Honfleur, with a lighthouse on a point with water lapping at its feet - could this be it, was it moved in land or was the land moved out? Turns out the mud flats filled in with sand over last century so the town built a big new sea wall and filled it in. The edge of the Seine is now almost 1km away from the lighthouse. Le Jarden Personnalités (Garden of Fame) now holds the mouth of the river at bay. Busts and statues of celebrities that were born, who lived or worked in Honfleur parade in this 10H park. Beyond this lies the beach.

Top left: part of Georges Seurat's Hospice and Lighthouse at Honfleur 1886
Right and below(star marks the spot): The same lighthouse today. The lantern was removed in 1908 after serving the community for 65yrs. This favourite haunt of the Impressionists wouldn't be recognisable if they returned today.

Across the marina from our room is the old church, St Etienne. It has been deconsecrated and is now a Marine Museum - it was closed. Around the corner down one of the oldest streets is the Normandy Ethnography Museum, in what was the old prison - it was also closed but at least had some windows to peer in. The streets behind are full of more galleries and tourist traps. One of the galleries was full of 20thC canvases and an Emilio Grau Sala shone in the window. A local artist, who has painted Honfleur for years, has a little shop/studio on la Rue de la ville that Petal and I picked a couple of little water colours up at.

Monsieur Lallemand's studio shows how artists can paint 'outdoors' from the warm. Two computer screens to paint from here.

I loved the carvings in this little store by Pierre Decourse, the one on the right was over €1000 so it stayed in the window.

Just down the hill from St Catherine's Church, C.Sanchez has a shop/studio. His little white dog appears in many of his paintings - bottom left in the night scene above. All the working artists were very friendly, even without us speaking French.

M's favourite souvenir from our Honfleur stay.

Down this road is a store with postcard stands out front and looks every inch the tacky type to avoid but lo and behold they were stockers of the genuine Laguiole knives. A single cutler(M assures me this is the term for knife maker - as in cutlery!) carves the wood and metal into a knife. The bee (some say Napoleon awarded the royal symbol for the area's brave fighters others laugh because the valley are renowned pacifists) or fly (lots of cattle in the valley) on the hilt is the brand's symbol but knockoff versions are being made in China and Spain. They also sold the French Opinel knives that Petal has been saving for since out last visit. Just as well we were driving home rather than flying!

They dress their homes well in Honfleur.

2nd left is a little clip that holds the ground floor shutters closed - many different types but after dropping my camera all were out of focus!@*&#!

Every corner had another design surprise.

Left: a modern build still made space for a wall shrine. Centre: Wall shrine on the Lieutenance (this was covered in scaffolding for maintainence so no photos) - once the home of the governor it was built into the city wall which was torn down long ago. Right: Honfleur was once known as a town of Pirates which this little wall shrine celebrates at the road end of Vieux Bassin.

St Leonard's in morning and afternoon light - the sun and clouds decide what colour the town will be at any given moment.

The morning we left I popped down Rue de la Republique to the Artisan bakery, Tartine and Macaron, to stock up on French bread for the next week. Petal and I had bought a raspberry pastry for Willow the day before but then had to eat it because it was too fragile for travel!

The Normandy staples of caramelised apple tarts and savoury crepes(Galettes) often with grated apple with a cheese or honey with goats cheese or chicken and mushrooms were gleefully partaken. The sweet apple tarts are served with creme fraiche(sour cream) and anything that can, has a splash of calvados(apple brandy). Hundreds of Ciders are also listed on most menus. My policy of always trying a local creme brulée was thwarted though because the few restaurants offering it were closed. M had a chocolate fondue(which we both had read as fondant when ordering so it was a bit of a surprise) and I had a rice pudding topped with a thick layer of raspberry coulis, not disappointing. Petal stayed home to doodle so we took a pizza back for her - not a gourmet! Unfortunately the French Margherita was covered in black olives - luckily they were easily picked off - ha!

Depending on the tides, tourists can chug around the port and Seine in the Jolie France.

Image from a tourist brochure advertising River Cruises that stop in the Port of Honfleur - obviously in summer.

Words cannot share the light of this place so here are a few pictures by talented folk that have tried to capture it in paint.

Eugene Boudin is considered Honfleur's greatest patron of all the Artists from his era. His bust in in the Garden of Fame.

Eugene Boudin - 'Festival in the Harbour of Honfleur 1858

Monet's 'Impression of Sunrise' of the harbour at Le Harve across the river in 1872. The exhibition of this in Paris caused
a critic to snort and say that it was only an impression. Monet heard and thought it was a good thing, giving rise to the term
for this school of art.

Monet's 'Boats in the Port of Honfleur 1866

'Un bateau a Honfleur by Claude Monet 1864 Spot the lighthouse!

Both of these by Spanich painter Emilio Grau Sala. The top of the Port in Honfleur.
A similar painting or perhaps the one on the bottom was on display for sale at a Gallery in Honfleur.
I didn't even go in to check the price!

'Honfleur' by Johan Bartbold Jongkind 1865 (St Leonard's in the center)

JMW Turner 'Honfleur' On his annual tour 1832 Watercolour.
(St Catherines is already grey at the back of the town - the hill behind is now covered in buildings.)

A few of today's artist's interpretations. All images for sale through http://fineartamerica.com/art/paintings/honfleur/all