Welcome to Giverny (2)
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After this visit - almost a pilgrimage - why not stroll along the village streets lined with old houses - lots of which adorned with flowers - and see the places where so many painters lived?
The pilgrimage can go as far as the village church - a nice little country church dedicated to Saint Radegonde, with an 11th century choi r- surrounded by churchyard where Claude Monet is buried. (His tomb is on the right hand side when entering.)

Two hundred metres away from Monet's house, on the right hand side, you will see the American Art Museum. This Museum reminds visitors that Giverny has a special place in both French and American art history. In 1890, Monet's fame had spread across the Atlantic and growing numbers of American artists came to stay in the village for weeks, months, years or even for ever, like Theodore Butler who married Monet's step-daughter, Suzanne Hoschedé. These painters sought the presence of the Impressionist master and the glimmering light and misty landscapes of the countryside, made famous in his paintings.

La Maison Rose, with ( probably) Blanche Hoschedé, one of Monet's step-daugthers, busy painting.

An American collector, Daniel Terra, had long been dreaming of bringing these works of art back to the place where they had been created and he fulfilled this ambition when inaugurating the American Art Museum in Giverny in 1992.

The museum exhibits in rotation the Terra collection's 600 works of art including: the greatest American artists such as John Singleton Copley, Winslow Homer, Mary Cassatt, James A. M. Whistler, Thomas Eakins, Arthur Dove, Charles Demuth or Edward Hopper.
New exhibitions are presented every year and even several times in the same year so that, no matter how often a visitor may come, he or she has always something new to discover.

April 1st - July 14th, 2008 Portrait of a Lady -American Paintings and Photographs in France, 1870-1915 This exhibition, organized in collaboration with the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux, will feature approximately 60 paintings, drawings, prints, and photographs of women at the turn of the last century drawn primarily from French public collections. John W Alexander, Portrait in grey © RMN Dennis M. Bunker, The mirror, 1890 © TFAA This exhibition will showcase these rich holdings of American art from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in French collections. Often purchased by the French government during the annual Salons, these paintings and photographs demonstrate not only the integration of numerous American artists into the official world of French art, but also the prolonged interest of public institutions for this “foreign” art. In addition, the presence of a work of art in the French national collection became a sign of prestige for American artists and assured their success in France and America. John S Sergent, Judith Gauthier, 1883 © Aix les Bains

July 15th - October 31st, 2008 At Leisure: American paintings About sixty paintings, drawings and prints from the Terra Foundation for American Art collection will introduce the visitor to one of the greatest invention of the modern era: leisure. Edmund Tarbell In the Orchard, 1891 © TFAA Edward Henry Potthast Ring around the Rosy, c. 1915 © TFAA Images of women sewing peacefully and children playing in everlasting flowered gardens, reflected a taste for the so-called “genre painting”. This new iconography was directly linked to the growth of an upper middle-class, to which artists belonged or identified themselves. Charles C. Curran, Waterlilies, 1888 © TFAA

The museum also proposes various activities ( lectures on art, detailed study of some of the paintings, visits of Le Hameau gardens, etc…)

Even if you do not wish to visit this museum (it would be a pity not to!) you are advised to enter its garden through the first gate and walk to the other end, parallel to the village street (free admission). It is a modern garden, quite different from Monet's but it will certainly delight you.

The whole garden is divided into little squares surrounded by hedges composed of beech trees. Each square has a single dominant colour: after the white garden, with water gurgling down a pond, there follows a square for herbs, another full of roses; a blue square and a pink one lead the visitors to the western part of the garden where wild flowers and plants are an introduction to a larger meadow sown with poppies.

Another almost legendary place is the former Hotel Baudy. Discovered in 1886 (or 1885) by the American painter Willard Metcalf, Mrs Baudy's small café became famous thanks to the numerous artists ,among whom was Cézanne and Rodin, coming to Giverny in search of inspiration.

Hotel Baudy around 1900

Hôtel Baudy is not a museum but a café and restaurant and, in order to visit the garden, you may be asked to have a drink. But one or two euros for a coffee and a visit is really very cheap to be able to walk in the garden with winding alleys lined with many different kinds of flowers that take visitors up to the top of the hill. And the innumerable varieties of old roses, bending under their own weight will suggest the charm of bygone gardens and the nostalgia of the 'Belle Epoque' in the 1900's)

The 1886 studio in the garden of Hotel Baudy

Do take advantage of your stay here to have a look at the galleries of today's artists who work in Giverny, Patrick Hans, Claude Cambour, Christophe Demarez, Gale Benett, Jacqueline Gougis and many others. Like Monet, they enjoy a kind of microclimate with so specific a light that the Master said: "I am delighted, Giverny is a splendid place."

A splendid place, indeed!

The Epte valley in Giverny painted by Monet in 1889

Tourist information, opening hours and price

Parking

Two mandatory but free car parks are located on each side of the main road. (An underground passage allows pedestrians to cross safely.)
From Vernon, the car park on the left (N°6 on the map) is for cars. Heavier vehicles (including campers and caravans) have to use the one on the right (N°7) This is also where the bus shuttles to and from Vernon stop.

Where to start the visit

Whether they arrive by car, bus, bike or on foot, visitors are advised to proceed to the Tourist Information Desk named here 'Point Info' (usually open from 9h30 onward) located in the centre of the car park for cars (N°5) where they can find all the information they require.

Then walk up to the end of the car park, to a gate leading into the street (rue Claude Monet). From there, Monet's house and gardens are about 200 m on the right and the American Art Museum is in front, across the road. In the same street , but on the left, the former Hotel Baudy is about 200 m away and the church another 200m farther.

Once you have finished visiting, walk back to the American Art Museum , opposite which is the gate you came through when you arrived, giving access to the car park.

Claude Monet Foundation

Open every day (except Mondays) from April 1 to October 31 from 10h to 18h. (No tickets are sold after 17h30)
Tickets :
Adults : 5,5€ (garden and house) - 4€ (garden only)
Special prices for children, students, disabled people and groups
Contact :: Tel : 02 32 51 28 21 - Fax : 02 32 51 54 18
and www.fondation-monet.com

Inside the gardens, access to the water garden is through an underground passage located, at the far end of the garden away from the house, on the right.

Please note that visitors may not come back into the garden again after they have left.

American Art Museum / Musée d'art américain

Open every day (except Mondays) from April 1 to October 31 from 10h to 18h
Tickets :
Adults : 5,5€
Special prices for children, students, disabled people and groups
Free every first Sunday of the month.
Contact : Tel : 02 32 51 94 65 and www.maag.org

Former Hotel Baudy

Open every day (except Mondays) from April 1 to October 31 from 9h30 to late at nigh.

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Other pages in English about Monet and Giverny :

* The making of Monet's garden : how Monet designed his garden over the years
* List of plants and flowers in Monet's garden
* Calendar of flowering times

* Giverny, an American colony : the painters who came to work in Giverny in Monet's time.

* Monet, the Seine and Normandy

* Did you know there were other 'Givernys' in the world?
Visit Monet's garden in Kitagawa (Japan)
and ' an American Giverny', Old Lyme ( USA)

* To end your visit to Giverny : a nice walk in the hills above the village