FrenchKate

June 18: Mudéjar art in the Capitole

  The statue of King Henri IV, which supervises the goings-on in the courtyard named in his honor, is the only statue of him sculpted during his lifetime.

The first photo shows the statue of Henri IV on high.

The second photo is a closer view of the statue. Normally, one sees the statue only at a steep angle from below.

What caught my attention was the design of the coffered wood ceiling above the Henri IV statue, painted in 1610. (photo 3.) The images appear to be straightforwardly Christian or heraldic designs, but intriguingly, its eight-pointed star design is characteristic of art of the Mudéjar, the Muslims who did not convert when Spain expelled, forcibly converted or enslaved its Jewish and Muslim population between 1498 and 1614.

Henri IV's personal domaine, Navarre, stradding the Pyrenees, was home to one of the largest populations of Mudéjar, Muslim refugees from Spain. The unanswerable question is whether the design of this ceiling is a coincidence or homage?

The last image gives you an idea of what Mudéjar art could look like when all stops were out and the Islamic principle of no graven images was given free rein. This ceiling is in Aragon, the kingdom that bordered Navarre; the Mudéjar architecture in Aragon has been designated as a World Heritage site.

 

 

 

 

June 13: Friday in Toulouse...Still hot

When the day's writing was done, we took a long, long walk around Toulouse, despite the heat, tracing the old wall and the walking along the Canal de Brienne, a welcome green stretch.

One of the wonderful features of Toulouse is its  green space of trees and water: the canal de Brienne, the tree-lined boulevards that trace the lies of the old ramparts, the 18th century gardens and the Garonne itself. When planning the Grand Urban project currently on-going in Toulouse, this green heritage was placed in the credit side of the ledger, something to preserve and enhance. On the liability side were the crush of traffic and what was defined as a lack of urban coherence and "lisabilité". It isn't even clear where the centre ville starts and ends.

How interesting the word "lisabilité" is! It doesn't have an English equivalent. The literal English translation would be "readability"--how easily one can make sense of and understand a written text--but here the meaning of "comprehend, make sense of and understand" is applied to a city landscape. Lisabilité also seems related to the English word ergonomics-the design of systems that can be used easily, intelligently and safely by users.

The goal of the architect who designed the piece of the project that caught my attention this year, the Place St-Pierre, was to open up the city to the water of the Garonne. These monumental staircases certainly do that, and I think that the overall vision of the staircase is splendid; it could make the Place St Pierre the Toulouse equivalent of the Spanish Steps in Rome (especially if the plaza space above includes fountains and trees.)

Nevertheless, not to be a critic, but...

First, I found architect's drawings and was surprised to discover that trees were part of the original design. I suppose trees on a staircase are never feasible, but it seems to me that shade will be an issue, at least when its hot. Note the people huddled in the shadow of the bridge in fourth photo. On the other hand, in cool weather, these solar collectors might be fantastic. I can imagine fireworks and concerts on floating stages here.

Secondly, note that Garonne is open. I love that! American city planners would feel obliged to put up some kind of guard rail, just in case. Still, it is easy to imagine that poor drunken students will eventually end up in the Garonne.

But, overall, what a fascinating, bold civic project. I admire the decision to privilege bikes and pedestrians in the hypercenter and the integrity of a design which seeks to enhance the old, preserve the good and improve the urban "lisabilité." I also admire the holistic approach taken (the whole hyper-center is re-envisioned) rather than a piecemeal approach, and my jaw drops at a political system which has made it possible. I can't imagine a project of this scale happening in Minneapolis or Saint Paul.

In the evening of this hot day, thanks to my belated discovery of google restaurant ratings ("Welcome to 2005," scoffed my incredulous son) we went to the La Cave Au Cassoulet" on the rue de Peyrolliéres for dinner. Cassoulet, King of Southwestern cuisine, is a food for cold winter nights not blazing heat. So as a tourist, visiting in hot June, what to do?

La Cave Au Cassoulet was a perfect solution. They specialize in cassoulet, so it was wonderfully authentic, and because they are located in a charming cave, a Toulousain basement of brick, it was cool enough. Our waiters were charming Gascons, hardy, enthusiastic and justly proud of their cuisine. We had a delicious meal.

   

April 23: What did the Maison Universelle sell?

I came across this antique box on Etsy:

"charming rustic French bamboo and wood box, with bronze handle and latch, and tapestry top. Label on the understide reads: "Maison Universelle, Toulouse" a large French retailer owned by a Monsieur Labit, active in Toulouse in the late 1800's. There is an interesting French legislation on Trademarks case related to the retailer described in an 1886 issue of The Economist. In good used condition with replaced textile wood cracks and imperfections as show."

The 1886 ruling by the Court of Toulouse mentioned in the Etsy text WAS an important decision. French Customs officials had been fining and imprisoning the sellers of imported foreign goods on which "the name of a French firm had been affixed after importation, on the ground that the purchaser might be led to suppose that they had been made in France."

Since French tradesmen were accustomed to put labels on the goods that they sold as a kind of advertising, this caused a chill to sweep through Paris retail houses and others who wanted to order bon bons for Christmas. Antoine Labit ordered a hundred boxes of stationary from a paper maker in Vienna labelled with "Maison Univeriselle, Rue Lafayette, Toulouse"--like this antique bamboo box. The boxes of stationary were seized by Customs; Labit was prosecuted before a Police Tribunal and ordered to pay a fine of 80f. Labit appealed and the judges who heard his situation agreed with Labit. They ruled that "All that the law prohibited was the marking of goods with indications that would lead to suppose that they were produced by a manufacturer other than the real manufacturer." The judges reasoned that no one in Labit's establishment would make the mistake of imagining that the merchant himself manufactured paper.

Jan 2: More Tissot interiors

Tissot's family in happy domesticity in 1880.

Update in response to a question and a few more details: The painting, Hide and Seek, is 30" x 23 1/4".

The setting was Tissot's home in St John's Wood, a suburb of London. The conservatory (in which many paintings were set) can just be seen to the right. Malcolm Warner, in "Tissot: Victorian Life, Modern Love" comments that the composition of this painting --he calls the interior "gloomy" and an "interior cage"--suggests that "to be female is to be contained in the domestic space." Tissot's presence  is suggested by the two cups on the tea table (too small to be easily visible in this screenshot). The Chinese porcelain lamp, the rugs, the furs, the gilt frame all communicate the comforts of a well-to-do modern family.

 

Sept 9: Monet's house: interiors

For all its length, Monet's house doesn't have a lot of rooms: a sitting room, studio, bedrooms and dressing rooms (one of each for Monet and for Alice), a dining room, a kitchen.

I have had to find these photos on the internet because taking photographs is totally forbidden on the interior. The rooms are painted in the most extraordinary colors, and walls are covered with Monet's collection of Japanese prints. The palette is taken from the prints.

Here's the tour.

From the central entrance hall, one enters the blue sitting room where Alice would sit with the children.

From the sitting room, one passes through another stair hall to enter Monet's old studio. It is down several steps. If I understand correctly, this was a barn that Monet used as his original studio and joined to the house. He subsequently built a much bigger studio (which now serves as a gift shop.) This end of the house was his domain. His bedroom was just above the studio.

I've included an old photo of Monet in this room. Much of the furniture in the house was Monet's, inherited by his children and bequeathed, along with the house and his collection of Japanese woodblock prints, to the French Academy of Fine Arts in 1966. All the Monet paintings here, of course, are reproductions.

Directly over the studio, accessible from the stairs in the second hall, was Monet's light-filled bedroom with its vivid yellow bed. Extra large windows over-look the garden. I imagine him waking up in the morning, surveying the garden from his window, and  composing the to-do list for his gardeners.

Two dressing rooms later, one enters Alice's bedroom. My sources always add that in this period, upper-middle class French couples like the Monet's typically had separate bedrooms. The unspoken modern assumption seems to be that there must be something wrong with the couple, if they didn't share a bedroom. The children, four girls and four boys, slept down the hall from Alice in rooms that are not included in the tour.

After a peep into the sewing room, the tour takes you back down stairs to the yellow dining room and the blue tile kitchen, probably the two most famous rooms in the house.

And that's the tour of Monet's house, six main rooms in all.

Sept 4: Back to gardens

Hagley Hall in Worcestershire has gotten a grant to restore its 18th century park, a park that was so lovely that Horace Walpole said he "wore out his eyes with gazing, his feet with climbing, and his tongue and vocabulary with commending." Evidently, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson visited in the early 19th century.

What interested me was the condition of the park and follies today. A nice answer to the question, "...but what happens to the garden over time?"

I've taken these photos from the website:

1. the view over the countryside today

2. The rotunda, a folly now in ruins. In its day, Hagley Hall (and neighboring Croome Hall) had more follies than any other house. I was fascinated to see the decay of these structures.

3. A pond. A stream running through the property was dammed in the 18th century to create the pleasant ponds that were valued in English landscape design. 

August 22: Back to Monet's gardens at Giverny

Here is another aerial view, this one of the layout of Claude Monet's gardens at Giverny. The house is at the top, 

Note that Monet used the convention of orderly gardens near the house, Clos Normand, and woodland walk away from the house, called the Japanese gardens because it was based on the woodblock prints that Monet collected. But Monet's "formal" gardens were neither symmetrical nor pruned formally.

When Monet moved to the property in 1883, the area near the house was an orchard, with a double row of yews down the middle. He cut down the yews, keeping only the two near the house to please his wife. The pond in the Japanese garden was added by Monet in the 1890s.

Between the time of Monet's death in 1926 and the restoration of his house and garden in the 1970s--it opened for visitors in 1980--the house and gardens were badly neglected. A road was built that cut off the two parts of the garden.

1. The plan

2. The central alley in late summer (a view taken from the website of the non-profit organization that maintains the property.)

August 18: La Lanterne at Versailles

  A couple days ago, I mentioned the distinctive style of architecture that we saw in Normandy, the long house, just one room deep.

It turns out that the style has a name, la lanterne--because, like a lantern, the style alows light from all sides--and royal connections.

In 1787, Philippe Louis Marc Antoine de Noailles, Prince of Poix, captain of the hounds and governor of Versailles, built a hunting pavillion, La Lanterne, just one room deep, on land at Versailles that Louis XV had given to his father. The principal building is sixty-five feet long and twenty feet wide; its thirty-six windows allow light through most of the day, hence its name. The ground floor has a sitting room, dining room and an office. Upstairs are five bedrooms with baths. Note the decorative pediment in the front. It has two wings (which form the U-shape in the google map view) which serve for the kitchen, service staff and security.

At the time of the Revolution, like everything else, La Lanterne was sold to raise money for the new French state, but it was repurchased by the Crown in 1818. It had American connections, too. The American millionaire playboy and publisher of the New York Herald, James Gordon Bennett, Jr, lived there in the late 19th century, and American Ambassador to France, David K. E. Bruce, rented it in the 1950s.

In 1959, President Charles de Gaulle reserved La Lanterne as a secondary residence of the Prime Minister of France, and--redecorated in the early 1960s and outfitted with a swimming pool and tennis courts--it was used by them until 2007 when President Nicholas Sarkhozy appropriated it for himself. Because it is very private and secure (despite being so close to Versailes) François Hollande has retained it for his use as well.

Evidently one of the prime ministers who had lived there commented to Sarkhozy's Prime Minister that in losing La Lanterne he had lost the best part of the job.

I should mention that the Constitution of France specifies a unique governing arrangement; French citizens elect a President (currently François Hollande) but the President shares executive power with a Prime Minister (currently Jean-Marc Ayrault) whom he names. The Prime Minister directs the administration of the State--among other things, he is responsible for its Defense, the execution of its laws, and civil and military appointments--and he chairs over general meetings of the State Council (which may be analogous to our Cabinet, I think.)

1. & 2. Two google views of La Lanterne.

3. & 4. Two views of the central pavilion. Note the deer heads on the entrance gates. Those are original to the Prince de Poix and have recently been restored.

I don't know if the architectural term, la lanterne--referring to a long house, just one room deep, allowing light through most of the day--comes from this hunting lodge, or if the lodge was named for the architectural style.

Update: I should mention that I have visited neither Versailles nor La Lanterne. These views are entirely thanks to the internet. Next summer...

August 16: Supplemental, for my female relations

 

The first view is a photo that I took of our room at La Resérve. The second is the view of the same room on their website.

I just wanted to point out the subtle effect of the area rugs.

August 15: More chinoiserie

My sisters will appreciate what I am about to write.

This is the Rose room at La Resérve, the bedroom in which we stayed. The wallpaper is Colefax & Fowler, "Summer Palace," a pretty modern example of chinoiserie.

1. The view of the bedroom

2. A close-up of the desk

3. Colefax & Fowler's "Summer Palace"