Whatever the season, Claude Monet’s garden is always a feast for the eyes. An open-air palette where colors are skillfully combined with each other. One of the most popular places for tourists is the water lily pond. At the beginning of September they are the stars of the garden. After creating this artificial basin Claude Monet quickly introduced water lilies to create a whole staging. The master of impressionism likes to paint them from the edge of the pond but also on a boat specially arranged. Interview with Rémi LECOUTRE, assistant head gardener who highlights the flowering time of water lilies. Maintenance must be regular.
It was at the Musée d'Orsay that tourists flocked to see Manet’s painting "Lunch on the Grass". Visitors comment on the exhibition and the shocking themes at the time of the painting such as the nudity of the woman. Victorine Meurent who is in the center of the painting is Manet’s favorite model. The painter is inspired by Titian and Raphael. Stéphane GUEGAN, curator of the exhibition, describes the painting as follows: "We feel that there is something ancient, classic in the attitude of the woman, and in this mould he introduces the folds of the body, the flesh, the gaze, the pulsating reality". This painting was refused at the salon at the time. Manet shows the clothes, and the fruits on the ground cherries and fig, sexual fruits. Focus on these details.
The cliffs of the Pays de Caux attract Parisians when in the 19th century, in 1858, the railway gives access to the seaside resorts of Etretat and Fécamp. While the elegant join the beaches in their crinoline dresses, the painters head for the cliffs and beaches. Six impressionist itineraries were created by the Eure and the Seine-Maritime by offering reproductions of works on the places where the painters painted. The painting goes to the tourists without them having to move in a museum.
Claude MONET had chosen the sea as the privileged place of his painting. Etretat and the cliffs of Normandy were the landscapes that inspired him. In the painting "Promenade sur la falaise de Pourville", he raises the tones to give equal intensity to the sea and the land. The red parasol of a passerby accentuates the blue and marine greens. Then, it is "The cliff of Etretat" which opposes the movement of the sea and the stability of the beach, the static part of the world, where are gathered boats aligned.
In 1966, on the death of Michel Monet, the painter’s second son, the Academy of Fine Arts inherited the house of Claude Monet and gardens in Giverny; The place is almost abandoned. "The restoration is done from daguerreotypes," explains Gilbert VAHE, responsible for the garden. He found period texts, memories of gardeners he met. Today the garden has found the varieties of iris and the known colors of the time of Claude Monet.
Edouard MANET is interested in the variations of color in space and the impression of fugitive lighting that he will translate into his painting; This is what is observed in his paintings and especially in the one entitled "Landscape with swallows" of 1873 which was refused at the salon. Theme also recreative among the impressionists, the city and the modernity of the city that we discover in the painting "The Railway" whose two characters represent Victorine Meurand and a little girl who watch a train. Here! this one was accepted at the salon. The play of light is studied here through the white smoke of a locomotive. In the last painting "By boat", a couple reflects the simplicity of the reality of a boat ride.
Auguste RENOIR paints the boulevards of Paris and the atmosphere of the city. He describes the hustle and bustle that reigns on the boulevards as well as the dust raised by the horse passages. Paris is also the battlefields of the impressionists. It is still the place of encounters, which we will never see twice, one of the leitmotivs of Impressionism.
La Bouile was a "privileged place by the impressionists because the light and depth of fields were exceptional", as specified by Jean-Pierre DASSONVILLE, painter. Among them, SISLEY represented "La Seine à la Bouille, coup de vent". A reproduction of the painting is located where this painting was painted. La Bouille represents an exceptional historical heritage because there is the presence of water and architectural heritage.
Etretat attracts the curious and especially painters. Jean-Claude HORSLAVILLE, tour guide, explains the reasons. Claude MONET will make a hundred paintings seen from the downstream cliff at all times of the day by playing on the effects of light according to the weather, whether it is the storm or in good weather.
In Pourville-sur-Mer, Claude MONET painted 146 paintings. As Christelle MORIN, a heritage animator, explains, "he was interested in the beach at several times of the day and he picked up his paintings at the same time the next day to benefit from the same light."