Advertisement
Published: July 28th 2014
Edit Blog Post
Musée Montmartre
This is the garden where Renoir painted 'The Swing.' .
I spent a lot of my Paris time looking at paintings in the galleries, but our course was call ‘In the Footsteps of the Impressionists.' It literally gave us the chance to walk, sit and paint where these famous painters walked, sat and painted.
Montmartre
Recalling his younger days, Picasso said "We will all come back to the Bateau-Lavoir. This is the only place we were ever happy." (1945)
At the beginning of the twentieth century Picasso shared digs with a group that included Juan Gris and Modigliani at 13 Rue Ravignan, Montmartre. On account of the personal washing drying on its swaying structures Max Jacob dubbed it the ‘Bateau Lavoir’ (Laundry Boat). Before that time Toulouse Lautrec, that notorious drunk, rolled down the steep streets to The Moulin Rouge and sketched the bar girls.
The Montmartre Museum pays respect to this group of artists and to those bohemians, the Impressionists, who were in Montmartre a few years before. It is currently restoring the studio used by Renoir, Susanne Valadon and her son Maurice Utrillo, among others. Below it is the garden where Renoir painted 'The Swing'; beyond it
Montmartre
In this house Georges Seurat painted his large dotty, pointillist canvases. is the Place de la Theatre where all the painters recorded scenes of daily life.
One day I sat at a café table and sketched the church in front of me. In the Orangerie Museum the next day I discovered the same view, painted exactly a hundred years before by Maurice Utrillo. We must have sat at the same table! I, like Utrillo, drew the Sacred Heart basilica behind the 1100-year-old St Pierre's church, but for the earlier Impressionists the Sacred Heart was still a work-in-progress.
The Place de la Theatre now hosts the only painters left in Montmartre, ones who sell ‘airport art’ to tourists. The Moulin Rouge, having inspired that well-known movie has no function left apart from hosting over-priced tourist shows. Surely Montmartre will outlive the current hype.
Before the artists started hanging out there it was once a country hillside with farms and gypsum mines; it was also the birthplace of the 1870 Paris Commune uprising. It was the Mount of Martyrs where St Denis the first bishop of Paris was beheaded. After he was killed he picked up his head, tucked it under his arm and walked ten kilometres, preaching a sermon
Giverny
Monet's house and garden, restored with funds from American fans. as he went. Anything can happen in Montmartre.
Giverny
The most famous of the Impressionists was Claude Monet, the painter of waterlilies. We made the pilgrimage to Giverny and filed through his house and garden as part of a continuous throng, struggling to find tourist-free views of the waterlilies to photograph. It would have been even more difficult – given the master’s long life and productivity – to choose views to sketch that Monet left unpainted, so I accepted the inevitability of being derivative.
Auvers-sur-Oise
Van Gogh lived with his brother Theo in Montmartre for two years and I shopped at the health food store opposite their apartment. The current tenant has a sunflower pinned to the drawn shutter (below).
Van Gogh left Paris and spent the last three months of his life in Auvers-sur-Oise painting with such certainly that his pictures show each brushstroke simply placed and perfectly in place. In this period before shooting himself he painted more than one masterpiece a day. The town should feel indebted to Vincent for its tourist business. We visited some of his painting sites, saw the room where he died
Louveciennes
The street beside the Renoir family's house is named in their honour. and paid our respects at Vincent’s and Theo’s graves. I had fun drawing Vincent's statue with some local school children. Vincent painted the church of Notre Dame d’Auvers in bright colours; I didn't want to compete and I represented it in more neutral colours.
Louveciennes
Renoir’s parents retired to a house in the country village of Louveciennes. Renoir and his friends often stayed in the village, recording the play of light in the different seasons. It is now within commuting distance of Paris and is rather a posh place to live. The village square and the streets around the church are almost untouched and some of the houses bear plaques recording artists who lived in them. Here I made my first painting of a village scene.
(Photos continue under the links.) Travel Hints
All our out-of-town destinations are easily accessed by suburban trains.
How I was
This was a very focussed trip - that didn't involve a great deal of travelling - and a very rewarding one.
Links
Some more of my own sketches:
https://www.facebook.com/GillianPerrettArtist?ref=hl Montmartre:
http://content.time.com/time/travel/cityguide/article/0,31489,1937013_1936990_1936855,00.html Bateau Lavoir:
Montmartre
The flat where Vincent van Gogh lived for two years with his brother Theo in the Rue Lepic. http://www.theartsadventurer.com/arts-adventure-3-chapter-2-le-bateau-lavoir-birthplace-of-cubism/ Moulin Rouge:
http://www.moulinrouge.fr/?lang=en Utrillo’s St-Pierre-de-Montmartre:
http://www.sacred-destinations.com/france/paris-st-pierre-de-montmartre Monet’s house at Giverny:
http://giverny.org/gardens/fcm/visitgb.htm Van Gogh at Auvers-sur-Oise:
http://www.vangoghgallery.com/in_his_steps/auvers.html The Impressionists at Louveciennes:
http://www.wheretheartiststood.co.uk/marlyandlouveciennes.html
Advertisement
Tot: 0.388s; Tpl: 0.022s; cc: 11; qc: 67; dbt: 0.1252s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.4mb
D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
In love with Paris
This is one of my favorite cities. Well I suppose many feel that way. I love reading your blog and the photos are wonderful.