A few words of introduction for this blog: I am a teacher of English, painting, and drawing who first encountered art history through a college job as a projectionist, assisting professors with the projection of their slides. I often attended four lectures in a row, getting a sweeping overview of art history from the excellent faculty at my college. Almost a decade passed before I could afford to travel to the parts of Europe to see first hand the paintings, sculptures, and architecture I had helped project in those college lecture halls. But by then I had begun teaching so had long vacations to travel throughout Europe by bicycle and had learned enough Italian and French to speak with people who lived in the contexts of the art that had so intrigued me and to try to answer the question that interested me most in art history - what was life like for the artists and audiences of the art in earlier centuries?
This trip is my eleventh using a bicycle as a means for exploring the context of European art. I love the way that a bicycle gives me great flexibility to cover quite a bit of ground at a speed that allows me to stop whenever something interests me without worrying about parking. I focused on visiting the towns in Brittany where Gauguin first moved when he tired of Paris and started to search for a wilder and more undeveloped landscape, the settings of Arles and St. Remy-en-Provence where Van Gogh moved in the last several years of his life, and the world around Aix-en-Provence to which Cezanne returned after his brief time in Paris. In the late 1880's all three artists wished to move beyond the landscapes of urban and suburban Paris that dominated the work of the Impressionists. All three wished to find a landscape that would summon from them a deep emotional response and that would startle the art world of Paris and win them acclaim.
I wanted to see the landscapes that inspired these painters, to walk and cycle through them and feel the qualities of light, atmosphere and landscape form that led to some of the most important art we have from the last hundred and fifty years. The summer before I had visited a number of excellent collections - the Musee d'Orsay, The National Gallery in Washington, The Metropolitan in New York, and Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. Now I wanted to see the land and man made forms that had inspired these works. I got to see some other cultural landmarks as well, the villages of the Luberon and the Cap d'Antibes which have both inspired a number of artists and writers.
Since I only had twenty days and wished to visit parts of Brittany beyond the reach of rail service and then move on to the south of France, I rented a car to move between the focal points of the trip. But if you are planning a trip through France, the combination of bike and train or bike alone will carry you most anywhere you want to go. The system of secondary roads used to navigate the vast stretches of farmland make excellent bike paths and newer path systems like those running down along the coast in Bordeaux and up the middle of the Luberon make biking there a real pleasure.
Our first day in France we chose to stay in Chartres as it's a relatively easy drive from the airport. We stayed on the edge of town but had two great visits, one on the first afternoon to the village and the exterior of the cathedral and gardens and one the next morning to see the interior statuary.
This shot was taken from the steps of the cathedral catching the late afternoon light during a quick peak of the sun on a cloudy day. I'm using a new camera, a Nikon P7700, and having fun with it, taking about 400 pictures a day.
This is my favorite of all the carvings on the portals of Chartres, the portrait of Abraham and Isaac, the second figures from the left. I've always liked the contrast between this pair and the other figures and the expression on Abraham's face as he turns toward the angel, one hand on his child and the other on the scythe, beautiful in the late afternoon light.
This is our rental car, a sporty little Renault diesel with a hatchback we hope will fit the bikes when we have taken them out of their suitcases and a huge sunroof and GPS. The first day we had it set in French, but we've backslid and set it to English for the long drive across to Brittany. We bought breakfast and lunch food at a giant market on the edge of Chartres, with 5000 kinds of cheese on the shelves and lots of other stuff like clothes and luggage. Our favorite purchases: goat cheese, apples, local apple juice, and chocolate spread - like Nutella.
