‘Every day I’m here, the sky and the sea are different,’ says Anastasia Kharchenko, as the incessant drizzle patters on our umbrellas. “Sometimes it’s so foggy you can’t even see the horizon, but some months the colors are breathtaking.”
We stand on a grassy cliff above the town of Étretat on Normandy’s wind-shaped Alabaster coast; here irregular chalk cliffs overlook the wild waters of the Canal. Kharchenko is head of cultural partnerships at the Jardins d’Étretat, a collection of intricately designed gardens that snake down the hillside, dotted with quirky neo-futurist art installations. As I gaze up at Étretat’s famous chalk arch and its needle rock formations stretching from the cliffs like a lazily leaning arm to the raging waves below, I apologize for the dreary English mood I bring.
Claude Monet was a regular visitor here in the late 19th century and painted this dramatic beach just north of Le Havre more than 100 times, as these whimsical weather conditions added so much atmosphere to his works. But although Monet and other impressionists were famous for their ethereal depictions of outdoor life here and in the Normandy countryside, their work was first seen together in a Paris photography studio 150 years ago.
Sunlight shining on works by Renoir and Pissaro is fitting for a museum with the largest impressionist collection outside Paris
Disappointed by the haughty traditional tastes of the Paris Salon, this group of artistic revolutionaries (among them Monet, Renoir, Degas, and Cézanne) organized their pioneering impressionist exhibition in April 1874. This year, Normandie Impressioniste 2024 is hosting the festival, which will start on March 22. A series of events to celebrate the 150th anniversary of this landmark moment in art, including shows in coastal hotspot Deauville, Caen and many more in the region.
One of the works exhibited in 1874 was Monet’s Impression of Sunrise, a hazy, loosely brushed depiction of the industrial port of Le Havre with a red morning sun reflected in the water. Painted in 1872, this painting is considered the first impressionist painting and became infamous thanks to the dismissive remarks of critic Louis Leroy, who unwittingly coined the term “impressionism” in a review published in Le Charivari magazine on April 25, 1874: “Impression, that’s what I call it.” “I’m sure. A preliminary drawing of a wallpaper pattern is more complete than this seascape.”
Monet grew up in Le Havre, and at first glance the modern city is nothing more than the dreamy cradle of impressionism one could imagine. After taking a two-hour train west from Paris, I emerge from Le Havre station onto the stocky and wide Cours de la République. The tram to my hotel glides along wide Strasbourg Boulevard, flanked on either side by a tidy cluster of concrete apartment buildings, the result of the destruction of old buildings by Allied bombs targeting Nazi positions in September 1944. After World War II, architect and concrete architect Auguste Perret was tasked with rebuilding Le Havre quickly and cheaply.
When Perret’s work was completed in the 1960s, the city’s stark grid of blocky streets formed the new street. central village This led to Le Havre being cruelly dubbed “Stalingrad on the Sea” in some circles. But context is everything, and the longer I stay here, the more different and unique it feels. There’s nothing like this I’ve seen in France. Its straight lines and uncluttered feel have a quaint charm not unlike some Japanese cities, and its modernist appearance was eventually recognized by Unesco in 2005.
“We say here that Normandy is the birthplace of impressionism,” says my guide, Lise Legendre, as we walk along the sea-soaked boardwalk in the Saint Adresse district of Le Havre, where Monet lived and where permanent panels depicting 19th-century impressionist works are located. For fascinating comparisons with the current landscape.
“But they couldn’t do that here to become famous and make a living from their art,” says Legendre. “They were supposed to go to Paris. This is how we connect Normandy and Paris. We are being very diplomatic.”
Paris was like a dream, but Monet found himself and his style here. Hillside homes line this corner of Le Havre’s wavy, pebbly beach, and glass-fronted bistros line the boardwalk, ready for the summer season. The gloomy silhouettes of container ships waiting patiently to enter the port stretch like glaciers on the horizon. Back in the city, the Musée d’Art Moderne (MuMa) is preparing a compelling exhibition, opening in May, that explores the relationship between impressionism and the sepia-toned formative years of 19th-century photography and how these images liberated artists. moving away from true depictions of the world around them.
Natural light pours in from MuMa’s large floor-to-ceiling windows, and sunlight casts across works by Renoir and Pissaro, befitting a museum with the largest impressionist collection outside Paris. In this form, light is a celebration.
“Impressionist paintings are part of my childhood,” says new MuMa director Géraldine Lefebvre, who grew up on Le Havre’s Claude Monet street. I ask him why the work of Monet, Renoir, Pissarro and their friends still resonates 150 years later. “Because these are pictures of daily life,” she says. “They are full of life, colors, atmospheres. You can feel the view. Maybe they are not intellectual, but they are pictures that people can approach and understand.”
Monet’s obsessive nature took him to Rouen, a cartoonishly beautiful city along the winding banks of the River Seine, filled with pastel-colored half-timbered townhouses and notable for the coal-black soaring spire of its three-towered cathedral, France’s tallest cathedral at 151 metres. He painted the complex façade of the Gothic cathedral 28 times in various lighting conditions, and his ghost series became one of his favourites. And starting May 24, American artist Bob Wilson’s Cathedral of Light show will leap onto the façade every summer evening, accompanied by music by Philip Glass and lyrics by Maya Angelou.
But for now, it’s a surprisingly balmy March afternoon with T-shirt-wearing tourists lounging outside on permanent wooden deck chairs. I wander through Rouen’s zig-zag medieval streets and head to the Musée des Beaux-Arts; another exhibition of one of Normandy’s more surprising inhabitants is about to open here.
David Hockney has lived here since 2019, and his Normandy exhibition consists of sumptuous green landscapes and playful iPad portraits of friends and loved ones. Admission is free and open from this month until September 22, and its location next to the masterpieces of Monet and his collaborators is inspiring.
France’s biggest exhibition of impressionism opens at the Musée D’Orsay in Paris later this month (Paris 1874 Exploring Impressionism), but the Seine and Normandy may leave a bigger mark, whatever the weather.
The trip was provided by Normandy Tourism. Normandy Impressionist festival begins March 22. Hôtel and Spa Vent d’Ouest inside Le Havre there are pairs €115 room only. Hôtel de Dieppe 1880 in Rouen has doubles from €127 Bed and breakfast. Accommodation in Paris was provided by: Hôtel Leopoldhaving pairs From €154 Bed and breakfast. Direct trains leave every hour from Paris Gare Saint Lazare to Le Havre and Rouen..