The Normandy Impressionist Festival is in full swing, with an impressive and diverse programme of events taking place throughout Normandy, some of which last up until November. Most however end in September. So if you are planning to come to Normandy, or have been thinking about it – it really is not too late to catch some of the Normandie Impressionniste 2010 buzz.

Rouen is a focus for this exhibition, for all sorts of reasons, and the organising committee and the various administrative departments in the city have not wasted any opportunity to associate the usual annual events that take place in that city with the Impressionist Festival. For example, the inauguration of Arne Quinze’s installation ‘Camille’ on Rouen’s Bastille Day celebrations.

And, for Impressionist fans like myself, Impressionism is really everywhere in the city of Rouen. I thought I would share these photographs with MGN readers who were not able to make it to Rouen, or Normandy to enjoy the Festival. The image above is a standard poster advertising the exhibition in the Fine Arts Museum of Rouen – one of the highlights in which are 8 versions of Monet’s painting of the Rouen cathedral. In the photograph below the logo of the ‘Normandie Impressionniste 2010′ festival is projected onto one of the administrative buildings for the Department of Seine Maritime.

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When one thinks of Rouen and impressionist art it is usually Claude Monet’s name that immediately springs to mind, Camille Pissarro is another. But, there was a group of artists we rarely hear about who were painting in and around Rouen from the 1870s onwards who produced some stunning paintings of the area. Léon-Jules Lemaître’s paintings of the the Gros Horloge in Rouen city centre is just one example.

Le Gros-Horloge is one of Europe’s oldest working Medieval clocks that is now set on the ‘bridge’ of a 13th Century building that goes across the street. Léon-Jules Lemaître, a local artists, painted the clock and its bustling street three times. And although the cobblestones and some of the façades of the adjacent shops have changed today, as has the fashion of the people on the street, the scene today looks as much as it does in Lemaître’s paintings.

Léon-Jules Lemaître is one of a handful of artists that became known of as the l’école de Rouen. Other more well known names include Joseph Delattre, Charles Angrand and Charles Frechon. This group of artists were painting in the impressionist style as early as 1860s, and went on to develop a particular tradition of Normandy Impressionism. Not surprisingly, Rouen and the River Seine features prominently in their work.

As with Paris, there was in Rouen an established annual Salon that dates back to 1833, the annual art exhibition that featured new work of local artists. Pissarro exhibited at the Rouen Salon in 1862, while Monet only in 1864. But, it was here that the Rouen School exhibited their new paintings, and it was a local journalist who named them “les mousquetaires” (the musketeers). As with the Paris exhibitions of what was to become the Impressionist art, the local critics in Rouen were similarly not always that complimentary of the ‘new’ paintings on show at the Rouen Salon.

Léon-Jules Lemaître’s paintings of the Gros Horloge in Rouen are on show at the Rouen Fine Arts Museum in the aptly named exhibition: Une ville pour l’Impressionnisme, Monet, Pissarro et Gauguin à Rouen, which is part of this summer’s Normandy Impressionist festival. There is a section of the exhibition dedicated to the Rouen School.

And when you have seen the exhibition, you can also take a tour of the Gros Horloge.

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I could go on talking about Monet for hours! I’m absolutely fascinated by this artist and by the way he painted. His paintings about his gardens in Giverny are mystical and mysterious, but also experimental and he kept studying on them. He could dive into a subject and paint it over and over to make it look exactly like the vision he had in mind. Monet was one of the first abstract painters, he was keen on experimenting and creating a new art movement. Arne Quinze

The city of Rouen is one of a number of towns and cities in Normandy taking part in one of the greatest festivals in celebration of Impressionism and the Impressionist artists in 2010. To mark this occasion in a grand way, Arne Quinze was commissioned to create an installation; he created Camille for Rouen, a tribute to Camille Doncieux, Claude Monet’s wife.

This amazing installation has been constructed out of ’sticks’ of wood that creates a kind of canopy over the Boieldieu Bridge that spans the River Seine. The official launch of Arne Quinze’s Camille in Rouen was at the beginning of July, and it will remain in place until the end of August.

Read more about the artwork in an interview on the Irenebrination: Notes on Art, Fashion and Style website with Arne Quinze about Camilleand Rouen here. (From where the above quote from Quinze was taken.)

I took the following photographs on Bastille Day, 14 July 2010, in the afternoon and then in the evening during the spectacular firework display that lasted for some 25 minutes.

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Tucked away in a small little square, Place St Amande, is the city of Rouen’s homage to Claude Monet. Admittedly, it is not an unattractive little square, with some very typical medieval timber framed town houses. But not only is the square a bit out of the way, it really does not have anything that one would associate with Claude Monet. It is not as if the timber framed houses were subjects he ever painted, and the Cathedral he has made World-famous can only just be seen on the skyline.

Monet painted the Cathedral over 30 times in the winter of 1892/3. While in Rouen he set up a temporary studio across from the Cathedral where he would work. And even while working in this wonderful medieval city, he was thinking of his garden. From his letters to Alice, we know he met a few gardeners in Rouen from whom he obtained flowers which he then posted back to his house in Giverny.

During his time in Rouen Monet also met Émile Varenne, director of the Botanical Garden. Varenne not only introduced Monet to the gardeners who gave Monet various plants, but he also gave Monet a great deal of advice and friendship. Monet would work on his Cathedral series in the morning and then go to the Botanical Gardens in the afternoon, where he would spend hours in the greenhouses. In a letter to Alice, dated 16 February 1893, he records his amazement for their orchid collection.

People discuss my art and pretend to understand as if it were necessary to understand, when it’s simply necessary to love.” Claude Monet, 1902.

As Claude Monet painted the Rouen Cathedral 30 times at different times of the day and in different weather conditions over a period of a few months, it is not that surprising then that the Cathedral will play an important part in this year’s summer festival to celebrate the impressionists in Normandy.

Planned for summer evenings in front of the Cathedral is ‘Les Nuits Impressionnistes’, a combination of sound and light, modern technology and cultural heritage, a Cathedral and a Fine Art Museum. And if the show put on at the Cathedral in 2009 was anything to go buy, this is going to be a show not to miss.

This spectacle is on from 1 June to 30 September 2010. But , if you are in Rouen in the next few weeks, the Cathedral is a scaffolding pole short of a building site. Understandably, this year the city of Rouen is pulling out all the stops. The Cathedral’s façade is getting a face lift, and is currently covered with scaffolding and screens (see above). And a temporary viewers gallery and a series of walkways are being constructed in front of the Cathedral, the plans of which are pictured below. The summer festival is predicted to attract a lot of visitors to the region, the home of impressionism.

There is no doubting that today a lot of people do love Monet’s art.

‘Things don’t advance very steadily, primarily because each day I discover something I hadn’t seen the day before … In the end, I am trying to do the impossible.’ Claude Monet, 1892

The Impressionists by Night in Rouen, as part of the Normandie Impressionniste 2010 summer festival, will take place each night, 1 June – 30 September, in front of the Musée des Beaux Arts and the Cathedral, the same Cathedral Claude Monet painted some 30 times in changing lighting conditions.

From the end of 1892 through into 1893 Monet rented rooms across the street from the Cathedral which served as his temporary studios. The paintings were then finished off in his studio at Giverny in 1894. In 1895 Monet selected 20 of these paintings to be displayed in his dealer’s Parisian gallery, where 8 were sold.

The Cathedral series was not Monet’s first series of a single subject, but it was his most exhaustive. For Monet the effects of light on a subject at different times of the day and the year, in differing weather conditions became more important than the subject itself.

‘Monet’s sensitivity to the natural effects he observed are just one factor that make these pictures so remarkable; the way he manipulates his medium contributes to their majesty as well. For the surfaces of these canvases are literally encrusted with paint that Monet built up layer upon layer like the masonry of the façade itself.’ Paul Hayes Tucker, 1995*

But this did not come easy to Monet, as is clear in his words above. He found the Cathedral a challenging subject and he wrote about vivid nightmares in which the cathedral in different colours, pink, blue and yellow, fell on him.

Part of the spectacular sound and light show that is ‘Les Nuits Impressionnistes‘ is a celebration of Monet’s Cathedral series. Some of his paintings are projected on to the façade of the Cathedral to dramatic effect, as can be seen in the second photograph below (taken during the show in 2009). The show also includes contemporary artists interpretation in homage to Claude Monet. Do not miss this show; I can not wait to see it again. Enjoy an evening out in Rouen, visit one of Rouen’s many wonderful restaurants and then as night falls enjoy the rest of the summer evening in front of the Cathedral and the Museum of Fine Art.

*Quote from page 224, Paul Hayes Tucker’s Claude Monet: Life and Art. 1995 Yale University Press.

One of the many events planned for Rouen as part of the Normandie Impressionniste 2010 festival this summer is ‘Les Nuits Impressionnistes‘. The Impressionists by Night is a spectacular combination of sound and light, modern technology and cultural heritage, a Cathedral and a Fine Art Museum.

The Musée des Beaux Arts in Rouen has the biggest French collection of impressionist art outside of Paris. Its facade is therefore a fitting backdrop for a sound and light show that tells the story of the Impressionist movement in the streets of Rouen this summer.

If what we saw in 2009 is anything to go by, this will be an attraction not to miss. The show lasts about 20 minutes, and the few photographs below give an impression of what to expect. Unfortunately, I only took still photographs – but as you can see from some of these photographs the show is not simply a matter of images projected onto the front of a building.

Not only will you recognise some very well known impressionist paintings, including the many French flags of Monet’s Rue Saint-Denis, fête du 30 juin, (which is actually in the Rouen collection), but there are some great effects. I particularly liked the way the windows were made to look like individual paintings, with great big gold frames.

The role played by the city of Rouen in the history of Western art at the end of the nineteenth century is immense. Camille Pissarro is said to have remarked that “Rouen is a beautiful as Venice”.

This summer the museum of Fine Art in Rouen will host a major exhibition of Impressionist artists as part of the Normandie Impressionniste 2010 festival:

Rouen is where Claude Monet painted the Cathedral some thirty times, at various times of the day, and on different days of the year. Paul Gauguin, who painted here in 1884, and Camille Pissarro both painted some remarkable paintings of the city, one of which by Pissarro is illustrated above – a view across the Seine River into the city of Rouen. That same view today is shown below.

The exhibition will open on Friday 4 June, and close Sunday 26 September 2010, at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rouen. You may also like to read my article on Léon-Jules Lemaître and the Gros Horloge in Rouen. The exhibition has a section that focusses on the work of Léon-Jules Lemaître and the Rouen School.

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