There are, perhaps, two principal ways to appreciate the works of the great French artists Corot and Monet. You can spend many agreeable hours studying their canvases in museums such as the Musée d’Orsay and the Musée Marmottan in Paris, or the Musée André Malraux in Le Havre. Alternatively, you can follow in their footsteps for a few days through the countryside that inspired them, a journey that also involves lovely scenery and delicious food.
Two technological innovations turned the Ile-de-France and Normandy into a vast open-air studio during the 19th century: the expansion of the French rail network and the invention of oil paints in tubes, which made it feasible to paint outdoors for prolonged periods. (Previously, the concern was that your paints would dry up.) So, during a recent trip to Paris, we had an early lunch at the dependable Left Bank bistro La Fontaine de Mars, then drove out to Les Etangs de Corot, a hotel in Ville-d’Avray, a quiet suburb 30 minutes away. (Corot’s parents once owned a country house here, and the artist’s painting “Ville-d’Avray” is on display at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.)
We enjoyed lunch at a 17th-century inn, which provided the sort of charming service and excellent traditional food that is not always easy to find in France anymore.
The 43-room half-timbered country hotel offers a peaceful setting and the excellent Le Corot restaurant, which won a Michelin star this year. The most desirable rooms are the Junior Suites and Suites with views over the placid waters of an étang, or shallow pond. Our lodgings came with patterned wallpaper, framed etchings and overstuffed traditional French furniture, a combination that created an atmosphere of refined rusticity. The baths provide Caudalie products made with grape extracts, and there is also a small Caudalie spa on the premises. During the summer, meals are served at the hotel’s second restaurant, Les Paillotes, which occupies a thatched open-air pavilion overlooking the pond. Overall, the hotel is comfortable and pleasingly decorated, its only drawback being slightly uneven service.
AT A GLANCE
LIKE: Attractively decorated rooms; excellent restaurant; small, pleasant spa using Caudalie products.
DISLIKE: Though well-meaning, service is often slow and disorganized; there is no outdoor swimming pool.
GOOD TO KNOW: This hotel is run by Alice (née Cathiard) and Jérôme Tourbier, who also manage the Cathiard family-owned Les Sources de Caudalie near Bordeaux. Since the Cathiards also own the Château Smith Haut Lafitte estate, these well-regarded wines feature on the wine list. The property is a 20-minute drive from Versailles.
Les Etangs de Corot 90 Prestige Room, $395; Junior Suite, $470. 55 rue de Versailles, Ville-d’Avray. Tel. (33) 1-41-15-37-00. etangs-corot.com
From Ville-d’Avray, it is a relaxing 90-minute drive to Lyons-la-Forêt, one of the prettiest villages in the Vexin, a little-known region that straddles the border of the Ile-de-France and Normandy. We enjoyed lunch at La Licorne Royale, a delightfully old-fashioned restaurant in a 17th-century inn, which provides the sort of charming service and excellent traditional food that is not always easy to find in France anymore. (It was awarded a well-deserved Michelin star this year.) Surrounded by a beech forest, the town itself is a peaceful cluster of half-timbered houses, with a large square dominated by an 18th-century oak-beamed covered market.
From Lyons-la-Forêt, we headed to Giverny, where Monet lived and worked from 1883 until his death in 1926. Giverny is an ambitious day trip from Paris, so even if you leave early, you inevitably arrive with the crowds. Until now, there has been nowhere to stay that was more than adequate, so we were curious and hopeful when we arrived at Le Jardin des Plumes, a new eight-room hotel. Surrounded by a well-groomed park with a duck pond and imposing larch trees, the hotel occupies a 1912 half-timbered stone house and was created by a young Michelin-starred chef, Eric Guérin. Guérin runs an auberge in Brittany, La Mare aux Oiseaux, but he had always wanted to create a hotel in his hometown of Giverny.
The great advantage of staying at Le Jardin des Plumes is that it allows its guests to experience the calm and domesticity that enabled Monet to be so productive in Giverny.
On arrival, we received a warm welcome in the small, informal lobby from Nadia, the efficient young general manager. We were then escorted upstairs. Four accommodations occupy the main house, and four with a more contemporary décor are in an annex. Our spacious and very comfortable duplex suite was bright and airy, with large picture windows overlooking the gardens, and a sitting area furnished with a leather-upholstered art deco lounge set (supplied, apparently, by Guérin’s mother, who runs an antiques business and art gallery nearby). The bath was separated from the rest of the space by a glass wall that was appropriately etched with water lilies, and was equipped with both a shower and a soaking tub. Up a flight of stairs, the bedroom overlooked the rest of the room from a gallery. I’m not often a fan of such arrangements, but this space came with excellent lighting, a cathedral ceiling supported by exposed beams, and a skylight.
After tea, we set off through the village to the delightful Musée des Impressionnismes and, arriving around 4:30 p.m., had the place pretty much to ourselves for an hour and a half before it closed. The museum displays a selection of canvases by painters influenced by Monet, including works from the colony of American artists who came to Giverny in the 19th century, the Japanese painter Hiramatsu Reiji, Alfred Sisley and others. It also stages changing expositions, including the current excellent show, “American Impressionism: A New Vision” (through June 29).
Afterward, we visited Monet’s grave in the village churchyard, then followed lanes lined by stone walls and draped with purple wisteria back to the hotel. During this peaceful stroll, the only sounds were a barking dog and some laughing children. The great advantage of staying at Le Jardin des Plumes is that it allows its guests to experience the calm and domesticity that enabled Monet to be so productive in Giverny.
That night, we had a superb meal in the hotel’s dining room. Guérin chose chef Joackim Salliot to produce a cuisine similar to that from his own kitchen in Brittany. The short menu of contemporary French cooking changes frequently, but our meal began with hors d’oeuvres of smoked eggs in their shells with sautéed squid and baby romaine lettuce, followed by burrata with oysters in a buckwheat sauce, accompanied by green asparagus on a bed of herbal sponge cake, Parmesan shavings and bresaola. Our main courses of chicken with a sauce of cider and Calvados, and veal sweetbreads with cauliflower mousseline, black rice and roasted-hazelnut milk were also outstanding.
After breakfast the following morning, we were at the doors of the Fondation Claude Monet — as the artist’s house and gardens are called — when it opened at 9:30 a.m. I’ve always loved Monet’s yellow-painted dining room and his kitchen with Delft-style tiles and a big woodburning stove. The house has been undergoing a gradual process of conservation. Last year, the artist’s bedroom was restored, and now the bedroom of his stepdaughter, Blanche Hoschedé Monet, the last family member to occupy the house until she left during the German occupation, has been reopened to the public after an elegant renovation by French interior decorator Hubert Le Gall. No original photographs of this room survive, but the new Japanese-style floral wallpaper and curtains are appropriate choices, given the taste of the times and the impact Japanese art had on Monet’s work.
Monet’s garden is open from April to November each year, and the flowerbeds change every month. (It was tulip season during our visit.) The lower garden, however, reached via a tunnel beneath the road to the village, is the immortal water garden, with its lily ponds and an island planted with bamboo, reached by green Japanese-style wooden bridges.
AT A GLANCE
LIKE: Peaceful setting; comfortable lodgings; friendly service; excellent cooking.
DISLIKE: A pool would be welcome during the warmer months, and the sommelier in the restaurant is rather hidebound.
GOOD TO KNOW: The best room at the hotel is the duplex suite in the main building; the restaurant is closed on Monday and Tuesday; tickets to Monet’s house and gardens can be purchased from reception or online at fondation-monet.com.
Le Jardin des Plumes 89 Superior Room, $275; Studio Suite, $345. 1 rue du Milieu, Giverny. Tel. (33) 2-32-54-26-35.
The following day, on our way back to Paris, we came to the château of the de La Rochefoucauld family in La Roche-Guyon, which has a beautiful 18th-century riverside garden sheltered by a steep chalk cliff. After a visit, we headed to Auvers-sur-Oise for a late lunch at the Auberge Ravoux. Aside from a good meal, the reason you come here is to visit the spartan room upstairs where Vincent van Gogh spent the last two months of his life. Ultimately, a few days in the northern French countryside is not only delightful, but one of the best art history lessons anyone could possibly hope for.
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