South of Paris (Road Scholar Trip # 4)
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| Arles |
Fourth installment of blog on Road Scholar trip The
Impressionists – A Retrospective, June 10 - 23, 2012.
We took a high-speed train from
Paris’s Lyon Train Station, where “Hugo” was filmed (a good movie), to Avignon.
We saw many fields of red poppies, blue flax, olive trees and grape
vines. We saw no leaf damage on any of the flowers anywhere in
France.
In ARLES we stayed at the
Hotel du Forum facing the yellow café
where Van Gogh and his friends gathered and which he painted in a famous night
scene, “Café
Terrace at Night.”
The café is still yellow and also has the name “Café Van
Gogh.” Van Gogh didn’t like people mispronouncing his last name,
so he often just signed his paintings Vincent.
In Arles we visited the 1st century AD Roman Amphitheatre,
which held 20,000 people, the Antique
Theater, and the 12th - 14th century cloister of
Saint-Trophime.
In SAINT REMY-DE-PROVENCE we visited Van Gogh’s
room in the psychiatric hospital St.
Paul de Mausole where Van Gogh admitted himself. He painted
for only 10 years – from age 27 to 37 -- and felt calm only when
painting. Outside the hospital were beautiful gardens and a grove
of olive trees, with reproductions of paintings outside that he did while he was
there.
In AIX-EN-PROVENCE we visited Cezanne’s studio,
which he had built for himself.
It was surreal seeing objects there that are in his
paintings, plus his coats and hats hanging on the wall. We saw
Mont Sainte Victoire, the famous mountain that Cezanne painted 50
times.
Cezanne is considered the father of modern art.
Picasso and Braque greatly admired him, and Picasso studied Cezanne’s
works for a lifetime.
One of the programs offered by Road Scholar consists of
having dinner with a French family. In NIMES several French
families were waiting by their cars to take us to their homes for dinner.
Frances, another woman and I rode with our “hostess” to her home.
The woman’s sister and a friend were also at the dinner.
They didn’t speak much English, but Frances and I knew enough French to
sort of communicate with them. The sister’s looks and humor
reminded me of Lily Tomlin. She kept flipping through her small
French/English dictionary. There were lots of laughs.
I told them in French where I worked. They said,
“Ahhhh!” (We’d say “Oh!”) Our hostess told us she
has been receiving foreign guests for 10 years. The dinner was
very nice -- filet mignon which, to the French, is pork. It was
well done and very good. (A week earlier in a restaurant we were
told we’d be having filet mignon – pork, so we knew what was coming.)
In Nimes we learned that the word “denim” comes from
Nimes. A sturdy fabric called “serge” was made in Nimes.
It was originally called “serge de Nimes,” but the name was soon
shortened to denim.
We saw carousels in several cities, all with a 1900 date,
but our guide said it was hard to know if they were old or newly
built.
In CANNES we saw the building where the Cannes
Film Festival is held, with stairs covered by the red carpet. We
walked along the boardwalk above the longest beach I’ve ever seen, with a large
number of yachts docked in the harbor. (Their owners vacation
there in winter, not summer.) The beach was covered with rocks,
and sunbathers lay their blankets right down on them. Some women
sunbathed topless, of course.
In NICE we visited the outdoor markets and the Matisse museum. The
museum is situated on the hill of Cimiez, in the former Hotel Regina where
Matisse lived. It has a collection of works left by the artist and
his heirs to the city of Nice where he lived from 1918 until 1954.
In Nice we also visited Grimaldi
Castle, owned by a cousin of Monaco’s Grimaldi royal family, which is
temporarily housing some of Renoir’s personal belongings and furniture while his
home is being renovated. On display were Renoir’s dining room
table, wheelchair, easel, palette, paint box, several paintings, etc., plus a
wonderful short black and white film of him in old age talking animatedly with
art dealer Ambroise Vollard.
Nice has the second largest airport in France and is
built on land reclaimed from the sea.
Carol Farmer 2012