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Giverny:
an American colony
However, it seems that the reason why Metcalf came to Giverny was not painting but picking and collecting egg shells: instead of talking about painting with Claude Monet, he is likely to have discussed botany and ornithology with the master's children.
Well, when did the first American painters arrive in Giverny ? We know that John Singer Sargent was staying there in 1885 - one year before Metcalf's supposed "discovery" of the village (according to what is said locally) - and had been working with Monet (Some historians of art believe that Sargent had met Monet as early as 1876)
Other sources tell a different story : the English painter Dawson Dawson-Watson recalls that Leslie Breck would have described him this first visit to Giverny as follows : "In the spring of '87 [he and] Willard Metcalf, Theodore Robinson, Blair-Bruce, Theo Wendel, and a chap named Taylor whose Christian name I cannot recall [it was Henry Fitch Taylor], were talking over some place to go to for the summer. All of the usual places, Pont Aven, Etretat, Ecoigu, and Grèz, were rejected because they were interested in finding a new location for painting. After consulting the destination board at the Gare St. Lazare, they agreed that Pont de l'Arche was appealing, so they decided to visit the town and see if it was as picturesque as its name. The train to Pont de l'Arche followed the Seine into Normandy and required a change at Vernon. As they approached Vernon, Metcalf pointed out a little village of white houses and a Norman church at the base of the hill on the opposite bank of the river and commented on its loveliness. At Vernon they were told the village was Giverny. Once aboard the new train they were treated to a second view of Giverny when they crossed the Seine and were doubling back. The painters agreed unanimously that if Pont de l'Arche was not to their liking they would return to Giverny the following morning, which was exactly what they did." Mr D. Scott Atkinson, former curator of the Terra Foundation, and as such, an expert about impressionist painters in Giverny, writes: "This account is suspect for it is known that both Metcalf and Wendel had been in the village the preceding year. This anecdote provides a chronicle of the founding of the colony by a group, as opposed to visits to Giverny by individual artists." |
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It hardly matters to know who arrived first and how. The fact is that , by 1887, lots of painters were at work in Giverny. They were attracted by the homely atmosphere, the shimmering light of the Seine valley and ' the Normandy sky with its clouds and rain every half-hour" as J. Carroll Beckwith (active in Giverny in 1891) would say. William Blair Bruce, a Canadian, who had worked mainly in Barbizon and Grez-sur-Loing, was enthusiastic about the surroundings. In a letter to his mother dated June 1887, he wrote about "the new settlement which we have formed here in this most beautiful part of France, the river Seine flowing by almost at our door" and he added that Giverny was "far ahead of Barbizon in every respect."
We know that the inhabitants of Giverny were totally unprepared (both commercially and socially) for the coming of young artists, most of them being foreigners, who flocked in as soon as word of Monet's presence had spread among them. The village, typically agricultural at the time, had only a few cafés, a grocery and nothing that could make a cultural and artistic centre of attention. But this may be the reason why Monet had chosen it for it enabled him to live as a country gentleman more interested in his garden than in society life. However some villagers managed to take advantage of the lack of facilities by creating lucrative businesses. The Baudy hotel is certainly the best example since the owners of the modest drinking place turned it into an international leisure resort. According to Dawson-Watson's account, it seems that it is Breck who talked the Baudys into building six rooms in the courtyard as well as a studio for Metcalf. And Dawson-Watson adds "Then Breck went to Paris and I happened to be the first chap he met. That was in April of '87. I went there [hotel Baudy] for two weeks as a try and stayed there five years". Robinson was the first guest of the hotel, inaugurated in January 1888.
 Hotel Baudy in 1925 [8] The Baudys would welcome all the artists who came and their guest book, in which they had to note down the name of every guest, looks like a true international "Who's Who" of art. The place was not only a hotel, but the main meeting place for social and artistic life and it is likely that, without Lucien and Angelina Baudy's commercial but also social sense, Giverny would probably never have become an artist colony. The Baudys built a studio in the garden and other sky-lit studio spaces under the roofs - sometimes to answer a single artist's request, for instance for Cézanne's fairly long stay in Giverny in 1894 - and the couple became famous high-end art suppliers. (Pissarro wrote to a friend : "Go to Baudy hotel, you will find there everything you need for painting;" Two tennis courts - for a game that was practically unknown of in France - were added on a plot of land across the road, facing the hotel.
A society unknown
to the villagers would go there to spend the summer and would sometimes
stay longer or even decide to settle there for years. Another example
was Stanton Young, a resident of Hotel Baudy, who later settled in an
old mill in Giverny.
The first wave
of painters were professionals - students or mature artists - but, as
time passed, novice painters, amateurs also arrived, often young women
for whom spending a few weeks in an artist colony was more a social
obligation or a pleasant summer entertainment than an artistic requirement.
A lively social life - international but mainly Franco-American - had developed in Giverny. Baudy was the "American painters' hotel" where everyone would dance at night sipping their whisky - a drink that the Baudys were among the first to import in France. The bill that Cézanne paid at the bar is well known : "Mister Cézanne, two whiskies with Mister Monet". These young people used to live a sometimes bohemian life that did not always show respect for more traditional moral standards. In addition to paintings showing women in perfectly 'respectable' attitudes and clothes, Carl Frieseke also painted suggestive nudes in the sunshine, which he would never have dared to do, had he been at home in Michigan, as he admitted in several letters. Le Moutier, MacMonnies' former monastery, had a reputation for being a place where the standards of behaviour were somewhat free ( it was "an almost libertine party zone" writes Derrick Cartwright) In 1897 there
were so many people in Giverny that Monet said: "When I first came
to Giverny I was quite alone, the little village was unspoiled. Now,
so many artists, students, flock here, I have often thought of moving
away."
The 1914-18 war meant the waning of the colony : most of the artists left and very few came back once peace was signed and Monet's death in 1926 dealt the fatal blow. In the 1930's a few surrealist painters and writers (among whom was Aragon) helped the village retain some of its reputation as a place for artistic creation and then the village fell into oblivion. Monet's house where Blanche lived until her death in 1947, was to remain empty since Michel Monet, the master's last son, no longer lived there. There were piles of paintings lying about in the rooms, the gardens were overgrown with brambles and nettles. These artists, once they had left Giverny, would return to their country, to the USA where they founded new colonies, in Shinnecock (New York State), in Monhegan Island (Maine), in Gloucester and Provincetown ( Massachusetts). We can also mention Cos Cob colony, one of the most important ones were Childe Hassam, John H. Twachtman and Theodore Robinson worked, and do not forget Old Lyme, dubbed an 'American Giverny' where Miss Florence Griswold's house had become a kind of replica of Giverny's Baudy hotel.
After years of neglect, the revival of Giverny came when the 'Académie des Beaux Arts' created the Claude Monet Foundation and undertook gigantic restoration work to bring the estate back to life. In the years that followed, Terra Foundation and private investors completed the revival of these historic places of such cultural importance.
Theodore
Robinson: Pioneer of American Impressionis.
William
Blair Bruce - Rain in Giverny, 1887.
Photos 1,
9, 10, 11, 21 : Les partenaires de l'Office de Tourisme: Vernon et environs More
pages about Claude Monet and Giverny: *Giverny
in Uncle Sam's country : Old Lyme and Cos Cob and, to end the day in Giverny, a nice walk in the hills above Giverny
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