Renoir Landscapes near Paris

France: An Impressionist pilgrimage
LANDSCAPES LOST AND FOUND
With a major Renoir exhibition set to open in Ottawa, Deanna MacDonald follows the path of 19th-century Parisian day trippers to the gardens and riversides that inspired the Impressionist's work

DEANNA MACDONALD
Special to The Globe and Mail, June 2, 2007
LINK:http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070602.RENOIR02/TPStory//?pageRequested=all

CHATOU, FRANCE -- How much does a landscape change in 130-odd years? This was what I wondered as I boarded the suburban train system in central Paris. I was going to the suburbs to look for the bucolic landscapes painted by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, in particular, some of his paintings featured in a new exhibition, Renoir Landscapes, 1865-1883, that opens on Friday at the National Gallery in Ottawa. Though he is better known today for pastel-hued portraits and nudes, as a young artist Renoir had an eye for landscape and set up his easel en plein air in the greener parts of Paris and its outskirts to paint verdant fields and riversides populated by urbane Parisians out for a day in the country.

These images brim with the beauty of nature and the bonhomie of an idyllic summer day, but when you read their titles, the places they depict - Chatou, Argenteuil, Montmartre - are surprising. Unlike other famous landscape subjects, such as Monet's gardens in Giverny, none of these places are what you would call green today: The first two are crowded suburbs, and Montmartre is as congested as the rue de Rivoli. Which made me even more intrigued to see if any trace of Renoir's Arcadian landscapes could still be found in modern Paris and its environs.

I had seen his works in galleries such as the Musée d'Orsay, but I had never seen the places that had inspired them. So with only Renoir's paintings in my head, a few place names in a notebook and a map of greater Paris, I set out.
As I sped past endless city sprawl on the RER train, I felt doubtful. And indeed this was no trip to the country. Looking for Renoir's landscapes turned out to be as much of an environmental pilgrimage as an artistic one. A century or so of industrialization can wreak havoc, and Renoir's blooming gardens and riversides have been consumed by the ever-expanding city and, in some cases, transformed beyond recognition - almost.

I found many of the places he depicted - some were quickly identifiable, often thanks to a bit of help from the local tourist board, while others had been completely forgotten under highways and apartment blocks. But, in each case, I was fascinated by the changes, as well as the occasional similarities in the landscape. Renoir's paintings suddenly became more than artworks for me; they became memories of a landscape long gone, much more intimate and revealing than any photograph. It was an unusual art pilgrimage to places of vanished beauty, but well worth it, for it let me see that under Paris's industrial sprawl there was once, not so long ago, a green paradise.

Found: Chatou

"There isn't a lovelier place in the Paris surroundings," Renoir said in 1880 about Chatou, a small community 14 kilometres west of Paris along the Seine. Emerging from the RER station at Chatou on a blustery spring day 127 years later, my expectations were decidedly lower. Still, this had been a prime destination for the Impressionists and various bohemian types (from Maupassant to Manet) who came to boat, swim and socialize.

New railway lines had reduced a trip beyond the walls of Paris (which stood until 1919) to rural destinations such as Chatou to less than 30 minutes, and these tranquil communities soon became "the" place for Parisian holidaymakers. Numerous guinguettes (open-air cafés and dance halls) popped up along the Seine, one of the most popular being La Fournaise on the Île de Chatou, where Renoir painted more than 30 paintings. "You could find me any time at Fournaise's," he recalled in a letter to a friend. "There, I was fortunate enough to find as many splendid creatures as I could possibly want to paint."
To get to this fabled locale, I walked about 10 minutes across a busy bridge to the Île des Impressionnistes, a relatively new designation for the Île de Chatou. Here, I was surprised to find myself before La Fournaise itself, which stood among a variety of reconstructed buildings (including a small museum about the Impressionists) all designed to evoke the time when this little island was an artistic hot spot. It was, to be honest, all a bit contrived and touristy - the original La Fournaise closed in 1905, fell into ruin and was forgotten until the 1980s, when it was declared a historic monument and rebuilt - but it was nonetheless evocative.

Even on a grey day in March, the restaurant's balcony looked as if it was just waiting for the convivial diners from Renoir's Luncheon at La Fournaise (1875) to arrive. Large panels with reproductions of some of Renoir's works were placed near the spot they depicted, including the Rowers at Chatou (1880-81). The painting depicts elegant boaters enjoying a summer day on the banks of a sparkling blue river.

The day I visited, however, the Seine was a muddy grey, the buzz of traffic from the nearby bridge constant and the view decidedly different - where Renoir painted small houses and fields are now industrial buildings and condos. And yet, I could still picture how this place was once picturesque, if only from vague similarities between the width of the river and the shape of the land with those in Renoir's scene.

From here, I walked about a half-kilometre along the Chemin des Impressionnistes - a footpath dotted with panels featuring reproductions of Impressionist works painted at that spot - to the contiguous Île de Bougival to discover another iconic Renoir hangout, La Grenouillère (the Frog pond).This was a popular gathering place with floating pontoons and a restaurant on a barge all joined by footbridges. Everyone came here - even Emperor Napoleon III stopped by in 1869, the same year that Renoir and his friend, Claude Monet, set up their easels together on the riverbank near La Grenouillère and set out to capture the effect of light on the water and the convivial crowds.

The crowds are now gone, as is La Grenouillère, which burned in 1889 and was never rebuilt; however, the sunlight still dapples though the trees, as it did in Renoir's and Monet's paintings. The narrow island on which it was located remains a leafy park (called - what else - the Parc des Impressionnistes) overlooking, on one side, the tall poplars of the Parc de Malmaison (the former residence of Napoleon's Empress, Josephine, and now, in part, a golf course ... at least it's green) and to the other, elegant 19th-century houses in Croissy-sur-Seine (which is also home to a small museum about La Grenouillère).And as a small souvenir, a panel of Monet's 1869 version of La Grenouillère (Renoir's version depicts the same scene) is set up where the frog pond once floated, reminding visitors that this quiet park was once a major party destination.

Lost: the regattas and gardens of Argenteuil

Not all of Renoir's painting locations were so easy to find. In Renoir's pictures, Argenteuil, 12 kilometres northwest of Paris at the widest and deepest point of the Seine, is a place of blooming gardens (Claude Monet Painting in his Garden at Argenteuil, 1873) and summer sailing regattas (Regatta at Argenteuil, 1874). Nineteenth-century guidebooks describe Argenteuil as an agréable petite ville, which had been founded as a convent in the seventh century and was known for its fine asparagus and wine grapes. Monet took a house here from 1871 to 1877 and Renoir and other artists visited frequently, often painting side by side the leisure pastimes and natural beauties of Argenteuil.

I took the same route to Argenteuil as Renoir and other Parisian day trippers would have - a 15-minute train ride from Gare St. Lazare - but the Argenteuil I found displayed little evidence of its romantic past. It is now one of Paris's infamous banlieue, a low-income suburb known as the place where in 2005 then-interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy was pelted with rocks and bottles after vowing to rid the town of "thugs." Its riverside, once the location of leisure walks and boat races, is a tangle of highways, dumps and factories.

And unlike the more affluent suburb of Chatou, I could not find a sign anywhere suggesting that this was once a spot of art-inspiring beauty. Local authorities clearly have more to worry about than preserving an Impressionistic past. But after asking numerous locals, I did finally find a small reminder: Monet's house. Unmarked on rue Karl Marx, its gardens are long gone and the building rather run-down (it now houses the clearly underfunded Historic Society of Argenteuil and is not open to the public). As I stood before it, I knew Renoir's landscapes were around here somewhere, under all the grime and sprawl, but I couldn't see them.

Parisian gardens:

Montmartre But I could see them in, of all places, Montmartre. I often forget that Montmartre, that urban tourist hub, was once a hilltop village dotted with vineyards. Here, Renoir rented rooms in a run-down, 17th-century house at 12 rue Cortot overlooking a vast garden, which inspired works including the Garden in the rue Cortot, Montmartre (1873). Awash with greenery and a profusion of colourful dahlias, the image suggests a lush oasis within walking distance to central Paris. And despite the mass of camera-clicking, guidebook-wielding humanity usually found in Montmartre today, a small corner of this oasis survives at the Musée de Montmartre.

Run by the private organization that strives to preserve a bit of Montmartre's fast-disappearing village atmosphere, the museum maintains a pretty garden below the first-floor rooms where Renoir painted some of his most famous images and, in the process, preserved in paint, a very nearly lost landscape.

Pack your bags

OTTAWA
National Gallery
OF CANADA 380 Sussex Dr.; 613-990-1985; http://www.national.gallery.ca. Renoir's landscapes at Chatou, Argenteuil, Montmartre and more are on view in Renoir Landscapes, 1865-1883 at the National Gallery from June 8 to Sept. 9.
Renoir (1841-1919), born to working-class parents and as an adolescent trained as a porcelain painter, evolved into a leading member of the Impressionists and counted among his friends Sisley, Monet and Cézanne. This exhibit covers his early career (ages 24 to 42) as he and his fellow Impressionists, rejecting the more formal, studio-based style favoured by the Paris Salon, shocked and thrilled the Paris art world with their revolutionary, impressionistic technique and painting out of doors.

FRANCE
Chatou To get to Chatou, take the RER (line A, direction Saint-Germain-en-Laye) to Chatou-Croissy (about 20 minutes from central Paris). From the station, it is about a 10-minute walk to the Fournaise restaurant and museum (http://www.musee-fournaise.com). At the museum, ask for the brochure, Le Chemin des Impressionnistes, which has a map of paths to places the Impressionists painted, including La Grenouillère, Bougival, Louveciennes and Croissy-sur-Seine, where you will find the Musée de la Grenouillère (6 bis Grande; http://perso.orange.fr/grenouillere/pages/english.htm).
Argenteuil Argenteuil is reached by local train from Gare St-Lazare (10 to 15 minutes). Monet's former house is found at 21 rue Karl Marx, near the Argenteuil train station.
Montmartre Musée de Montmartre; 12 rue Cortot;; http://www.museedemontmartre.fr.