SUNDAYS AT THE CHATEAU: MONET'S FORGOTTEN SERIES!

[Music] hi i'm stephanie and this is my home the 16th century chateau de la land la land was owned for hundreds of years by a family of marquis who were at the heart of french royal life one of them even had the honor of being sent by king louis xv to greet marie antoinette on her arrival in france but far from being a stuffy museum this chateau is a living home i live here all the time and i'm regularly joined by my mother my family my friends and wonderful volunteers from all over the world who helped me to lovingly restore this historic home welcome to la land a chateau filled with life love and laughter welcome to sundays at the chateau where today we have something very different for you because oliver and i are going to go on an adventure to a local village to tell you about the forgotten series of paintings by monet i think my chariot awaits okay sorry i've been i've been keeping ollie waiting today we're finally going to leave we were due to leave at 10 30 and apparently it's now half past two oh yes well i was a touch late that's fine ladies i'm a little worried that you're driving there are you sure you're i i know exactly what i'm doing oh okay why does it scare me when you pass my test fourth time i know exactly what i'm doing i'm so keen on the driving bit but the beeping bit's really fun nothing that you're saying to me is filling me with confidence right now okay okay straight i thought you were navigating no no i think you're navigating well then we've got a real problem because i wasn't navigating are you navigate tricks or is it navigator okay i'll be navigating now i know now i'll be navigating how long have you known me to know that i am not the right person to do map reading it's very tricky in this area because there's no phone signals otherwise i would just like have my phone and there's so few road markings so this is quite a fun little place to turn around this is the destination oh my goodness this is amazing wow i've been looking for a little place near the chateau well this is incredibly close to the chateau this is beautiful isn't it okay we've made it three minutes from the chateau and we've already stopped because this is epic i hope it's not someone's house but i don't think it is i don't think anyone lives here looks quite old the straw we definitely need to find out who ends us if you're interested in finding a house near the chateau this is so beautiful this is like an artist's is that another building here no but look here under the this sort of tree i think there's a there's a stone wall artist house and then like artist studio and gallery so near the chateau but practically walking distance you know to remain friends why do you need distance from me oliver and i might occasionally invite you around it's huge i know it's really big isn't it we should definitely look into that it looks like it's just been about blackberries okay i think it's a sign oliver because there's just two ripe blackberries [Music] i'm bringing you one can see it now it's gorgeous i don't know how you find out who owns me do you want to have the blackberry the symbolic blackberry oh thank you that's rather good it's a sign there's lace curtains in that window it might be someone's house but stuff you're not going to believe this my phone is beeping what and we have one beautiful bar 4g no no it's not possible this is this is prime real estate oh my goodness all mod cons this is this is this will this will exceed the chateau in its appeal yeah there's you can't afford this oliver let's leave if it's got one bar or four g it's not for the likes of us i can only dream of such luxury we know when we're battling above our station so goodbye my artist retreat i'm just imagining the courtyard is done there's easels up it could be really beautiful this couldn't it so it's so lovely settings just idyllic we need to look into that definitely so where am i going navigate uh back exactly the way that you were coming because that's why we're just trying to turn in here and then we found a house well you know serendipity it's lovely i really really like it yeah me too no it's fine it's got a magic to it it's open can't do culture on an empty stomach we need cake never culturally empty something there's nothing worse i think we've chosen two little strawberry tarts and the religious which is quite like an eclair but a different shape if there are three cakes does that mean that two are for me one is in the memory of monet and one is for each of us i'd like to remember monet with that cake mission accomplished should we go back to the chateau now no oliver we can only have this once we've done our discovery where i can't even open it oh we can't even look at it until later we have to get to the point where monet did his paintings then we're allowed you're a hard task and i'd just like my wife camilla to know that i haven't had any cake since i've been in france at all have i stephanie no i haven't seen you eat anything no definitely no it's fine this is my first one so in a way it's a little bit disappointing with the weather this is probably preparing for me for my trip back home to england tomorrow to be honest it's been so beautiful every single day that you've been here until today until our outing oh yeah i think it's going to rain but in a way it's appropriate because i think it's the weather that holds the key to why this place is so important and i'd argue that this weather potentially changed the history of art i reckon oh it's my hypothesis big twist well we finally made it that is the steeple of the church of the village of wrestling a tiny sleepy village in the heart of rural france and it's here that claude mourinho came to paint in 1889. he was invited by his good friend the critic and writer gustav jeffra to come and visit the poet maurice rolina who lived in this village so we're here and i have to say this could be described as a village charm it is lovely lovely little church look at that church steeple it's so unusual i love it and there is a very unsuspected treasure most people coming to this tiny little village would not expect what we're about to see we're stepping back in time to a place that was really a hub of art and poetry in the 19th century it's absolutely stunning in here look at that balcony beautiful this sculpture and relief was made by the great french sculptor auguste hodan now you would not expect to see a work by him on the side of a village church in the middle of france in this sleepy countryside but in fact he was good friends with maurice rolina rolina lived here between 1883 and 1903 and after his death order made this in commemoration of him what do you think is happening in this relief it seems to be a sort of vision i think that that is the dying hollina seeing this wonderful heavenly vision before him is that an angel i wonder or is it a muse is it an angel seems open to interpretation maybe by going to the museum or gustor down in paris we could find out morally because there they have some little tryouts in plaster and also a marble of this and so perhaps there'd be more information about it there sounds like a good reason paris trip yes always a good excuse i love it come on let's find a coffee caffeine is required that sounds good over here i think restaurant there's our teeth sounds appropriate there's always a nice cafe around the corner to stop and have a coffee it's very good to stop and have a coffee actually really lovely because i'm looking at you and just next to you where there are red shutters that is where molly stayed that house do you think he came here for a cheeky latte in the morning definitely it's amazing this it's interesting because no one really quite knows how monet met rhoda but they had a common friend in the form of gustav jeff roy and he was the art critic who invited monet to come and stay at roland r in 1889 so it's very likely that he was the reason they met and monet and rhoda they had a lot in common their birthdays were only two days apart they were both born in 1840 so they were true contemporaries they became really good friends i mean they had their moments but they were friends well they like us people wouldn't associate the paintings of monet with the sculpture rodin nowadays but at the time they did many joint exhibitions together including the paintings that monet did here in 1889 sort of march-ish were then exhibited in paris in the summer in the gallery george petite along with the sculptures of rodan so it was a truly joint blockbuster exhibition i want to go i want to go back in time can we do that back in time and maybe buy a couple of yeah because i suspect that the prices in those days were probably a little bit more affordable than the prices today if only we know then and had even been alive that's a small point and i've got some bad news for you though stephanie i don't like bad news it's my least favorite news well we have to go for a walk i shan't for those of you who don't know stephanie's aversion to walking stephanie does not really like walking without exercise in any form no i like reclining i'm a recliner in life we've got to walk for a whole 15 minutes are you sure you can manage it is that one way or round trip it's downhill but you know what that means oh don't don't [Laughter] you're staying down there we then have to walk all the way back up so come on then i think we need to go and pay for this and then we have little journey and where we're going is to the the confluence or where the two rivers join the petit cruz which is probably petite cruz is that right yes come on oh money i have to say stephanie i do think that monae looks as enthusiastic about the walking as you are right exactly neither of us want to go on this walk but he was doing it in the name of art and so are you stephanie and he went nearly every day yeah exactly come on let's go stop putting it off stop i feel your pain monet i'm glad we've got a picnic i can't do a walk without a picnic we have baguette we have susan we have lovely little patisseries we have a little bit of bubbly i came to france to get fit and lose weight which is really really difficult camilla he only eats on the vlog the rest of the time he's fasting before we go down to the river i think we should have a closer look at monet's house where he stayed are you a big fan of money do you know what he's not top of my playlist because i love figurative painters but i do admire him greatly i admire him because he was one of that sort of rebellious group who revolted against the academy the traditional academy of french painting so this was with degas cezanne and so forth and they formed a society called the anonymous society of painters sculptors and printmakers etc which i think is very cool particularly such a bit at the end and they held a very famous exhibition in 1874 where they suddenly brought all of these dynamic vivid loose sort of brush straight paintings which now seem so almost conservative because we're so used to seeing them but at the time were incredibly incredibly radical and it's interesting at that exhibition monet inadvertently termed the phrase impressionism really yes he had a painting in the exhibition called sunrise impression yes and one of the critics took umbrage at the word impression and sort of used it as a dismissive term talking about actually yeah it was yes an impression as in a kind of mere sketch but it really took on the k mobsie a very positive word nowadays is now one of the best loved art movements and that's all because he called one of his paintings impression of a sunrise exactly this village is so charming it's wonderful for a sleepy village this really is a hotbed of art over there we have the rue de monet and down there was rolling are the artist who was a great sort of inviter of people to come and visit particularly artists so this would have been quite quite a commune really and i can only imagine the dinner parties i bet they were spectacular it's like being at la land exactly yes mini la land it really is like stepping back in time walking through this village olly even i have to admit that this walk is absolutely idyllic look a little castle in the distance and this gorgeous fairytale house this is beautiful the little castle is good but the cows are also excellent hello cows these limos are ones yes yes the white ones what a scene look at the countryside really it makes you want to start painting immediately doesn't it run and get an easel you are gorgeous wow huge aren't they ollie is beautiful i had no idea can you believe i've never been here and i live just around the corner it's just a slight paradise it makes you want to frolic down the hill doesn't it are you going to frolic on the way up as well yeah it is quite steep i like to think of all of the parisian high society of the fender siekler coming down here for picnics by the river just as we're going to do now yes yes with a similar sort of baguette absolutely not much would have changed similar cakes as well i suspect probably a few more so it's interesting they've done little signs which is great to show where monet did his paintings from but look at this so this is his painting yes it is the kind of riverbank yeah hillside with no trees on it and we're just completely blocked by trees nothing but trees as far as the eye can see so they say this landscape has radically changed even in the last 100 or so years because the area unlike so many in france which has got more populated has actually got less populated so people have left and all the trees have grown back it was much more craggy and much more rocky and much more open in monet's age it's so true it's very sad for the french countryside it's been hugely depopulated ever since the first world war but i find it extraordinary that i am living in one of the only places on planet earth that has been depopulated over the last 150 years everywhere else is becoming more and more crowded and here we are surrounded by trees and silence and bird song with the memory of these artists it's a heaven now it is do you think the depopulation's got anything to do with your influence stephanie oliver there's been a steep decline in people running for the hills running for the cities in the last in the last 15 years just to get away from me it's really odd why that's happened isn't it stephanie i'm going to take the picnic and i'm going to have it by myself oliver okay how would you like that do a stephanie's drop we have found a river oliver we found a path that has two ways we've got 50 chance of getting this right so we haven't found the convergence of the rivers we found the convergence of the paths i think it might be starting to rain a little it is which is very appropriate because this is what happened i want to hear your rain theory i'm looking forward to the rain theory but i've been told i'm not allowed until we have our picnic and we're settled yes we need to have the picnic i think this is it people are swimming this is so idyllic can you imagine in the summer coming here but this is where the action happens this is where the two rivers join and this is the scene where monet painted his series of paintings could i just say that says something for the weather today that you don't realize it is the summer it's july oh that's a good point yes it is a little bit cold look at this though the views opening up this is it this is where he painted the series oh wow that's stunning oh the water level's much higher than it would have been in those days because there's been a dam built there's a barrage now and that's why we don't see quite as steep of you as he would have seen oh it's idyllic i've lost the words it's actually really beautiful so beautiful i'm a muppet for not coming here before i know and there's even a beach this is actually literally standing on saturday holidays definitely we're on holiday full on summer holiday i'm wearing my barber jacket this is a brit this is a british summer holiday except we're in france and luckily the food's french that's true yes yeah i couldn't find picnic blankets so hey that's not one of your finest curtains no it's from the charity shop i buy them to turn them into tablecloths it's at one end it's fine there we go beautifully done this poor picnic blanket curtain's really suffering today a little taste well cheers tomorrow cheers cheers only here we have this perfect french rustic picnic all these lovely french delicacies and then i noticed someone snuck in the jamaica ginger cake didn't they i don't know where that came from really you have no idea how this got in there i confess actually that was sent to you as a president i know it's my personal stash and i found it and i just slipped it into the picture you did this i'm going to have a little sauce sandwich i think i'm going to mainly focus on the case good it's a good division of labor time for cake i wonder if monet ever had such a lovely cake whilst he was painting this view a little bit tricky to eat just a little superb i actually feel really moved i've seen these paintings so many times and i'm standing right here where money must have been to paint that view it makes me want to go to boston to see the painting in the museum of fine art there incredible the problem was was that the weather was just incredibly changeable so i don't think that pacers in france are very used to this in the uk we're used to it the whole time i mean it's like grotty one day and then sunny the next but here in france it's normally sunny the sun always always shines in france but here in the middle of france very different story so he'd be out there doing a sort of beautiful sunny scene and then suddenly it would start raining and everything would go gloomy so his colors were like nothing like what he was looking at so he didn't have to take another canvas out and start doing a gloomy scene you know kind of subdued colours and then what would happen the sun would come out and then the sun would come out and begin these lovely colours and he was getting incredibly frustrated incredibly and it was getting really cold as well he had to like cover his hands with glycerin because his hands were cracking up with the cold um and he got to the stage where he didn't know what to paint because the weather kept changing he's trying to capture the light the whole time so i think he ended up doing around 24 canvases and he had this kind of system where he'd have this like sunny ones over here so when the sun came out he pulled out the sunny one and started working on that and then the rainy ones over here and when it started raining you pull those out and then the gloomy ones in the middle so what what happened was he created by mistake really because of the weather the first series paintings the first monet series paintings and so in the exhibition that we talked about that he did with rhoda in the gallery georges patty was laid out amongst all of other paintings i think that he exhibits about 140 odd there was a series of over 20 of this scene and scenes from around this area all in these different weather conditions and from that gave him the idea i believe of doing series doing the same scene in different weather conditions and different lights and so forth and we've seen that afterwards we saw that with the scenes in venice the famous paintings of venice the haystacks the beautiful haystacks and of course rouen and the london scenes as well and what's more of course the very famous water lilies he did in the last 20 years of his life and i don't think those series of paintings would have happened had he not come here and the weather being a bit rubbish this area led to the water lilies one of the greatest gifts an artist has ever given to humanity beautiful i think we should raise a toast this valley hey i think i'll take your glasses cheers and you know what i slipped into the picnic basket more cake there's a lot more cake now i brought some of the letters that monet wrote back to his while not quite wife alice alice he wrote to his alice and so we can sit on this spot reading some of the letters and seeing what he was writing about this area we should do do you know about alice have you got a little bit of scandalous gossip for us a little bit you know i love a little scandalous gossip so i have got some gossip actually oh good so the monets were friends with a couple called the hoshides that's ernest and alice ernest was a wealthy department store owner who loved to collect paintings including monets so the two couples became friends and really hit it off together unfortunately for poor earnest he was busy doing his department store business monet took a little bit of fancy to his wife yes and they started having an affair worse than that what was more scandalous is that monet's wife very sadly became ill in the late 1870s very ill was bed bound and so forth and monet actually invited alice and her children to come and stay where alice was going to look after camille on her sick bed so he moved his mistress in to nurse his wife yes that does sound quite scandalous doesn't it yes and unfortunately camille passed away much to monet's money sadness and then he didn't actually marry alice they stayed together and they stayed together for many years but they didn't marry until ernest had actually died for her husband's death as well she had to yes so alice kind of replaced camille and actually unfortunately alice was seemed to be very very jealous of camille and destroyed all the photos and letters that monet had as a memory oh that's awful it seems seems a little bit extreme but that's what happened so stephanie you've brought some of these salacious letters that monet was writing to alice yes when he was here so i brought them and i can read you little bits from them are they allowed on this vlog oh let's see now i'd love to say that these were a source of titillation and gossip but olly it seems that all he did was talk to alice about the weather [Laughter] you think he was an englishman on the 20th of march so he'd actually not been here for that long only a couple of weeks by then he writes to her you're lucky to have good weather here far from being warm and sunny it's terrible rain wind sun for the last two days i've been very stressed working anyway but badly and i'm not happy with myself so far but i'm not going to let myself get discouraged far from it it could improve especially if the weather would become a little more regular well i'm afraid to say i don't think it did improve five days later he adds yesterday and saturday was so nice that i work like a madman but today i've had to stop again it's raining it's really the worst luck i hope that it will improve this afternoon these interruptions are taking too long and in spite of the cold things are growing and changing so he was really unhappy because not only was it freezing but he didn't want the leaves to start appearing because he didn't want nature around him to be changing and yet in spite of the cold nature was coming to life and leaves were growing there's this hilarious story where monet is painting this sort of stark scene of this leafless oak tree on the beach and he's painting it it's kind of very somber and kind of difficult weather and then suddenly it's taking so long so long to paint this thing because the weather's changing so much that the tree starts growing leaves and it becomes like fully foliage on this on this tree and he can't finish his painting because his painting didn't start with leaves so he has to employ a local farmer to climb up onto the tree and take the leaves off one by one so he can carry on doing his painting the extremes artists go to to get the right shot i found the oak tree on the 8th of may he wrote to alice i'm going to try to offer the owner of the oak 50 francs to have all of the leaves removed from the blasted tree without which i'll be unable to finish and i have five paintings in which it appears in three of which it's the central figure and the very next day the 9th of may he writes i'm overjoyed the unhoped for permission has been granted by the owner it was a huge task to bring ladders big enough to this site in the ravine but finally it's been done and two men have been working on it since yesterday isn't it a coup to finish a winter scene in this period sadly it's a gray day a delicious grey that i'd rather have had a month ago oh he's never happy with the weather [Laughter] though isn't it from this adversity so from the frustration with the weather came eventually the beautiful series and the water release it's just it shows that we have to kind of like look for the for the silver lining in the cloud there's always a silver lining he was so sensitive to the colors that's what's extraordinary he kept complaining that sometimes the river was green and sometimes it was yellow and it wouldn't stay fixed and he wrote to jeff hwa his friend the art critic saying everything is changing so much nature is transforming so quickly that i'm constantly chasing nature rather than capturing it it's lovely isn't it but i think that is what he then learned to do he learned later to accept that things are changeable and to just try to capture them in all of their states did you know that monet actually ended up employing a gardener whose job every morning was to go and wash and dust the water lilies so they are ready for his painting no i like that hang on we're getting my changeable weather i know i know for the first time today i had to put my sunglasses on whip out the old canvas and it has made everything mottled look look at the dappled sunlight coming through absolutely beautiful it does change in an instant you know thank you so much for suggesting we come here stephanie i've loved it i've loved it i think it's you know when people talk about the series of paintings you know the money's painting series they always talk about the water lilies venice ones and so on and their haystacks no one ever talks about this because i think outside france they are kind of forgotten really and yet these were the very first ones this was his first series do you know what i think you know they are beautiful let's be honest they may not be the most beautiful but in many ways they are probably the most important because none of those other wondrous paintings would ever have happened had money not come to this place and had he not had really bad weather talking of which i think it's about to rain so i think we need to go home well ollie is the dark cloud's coming behind us it's taught us that every cloud has a silver lining and that if monet hadn't had that difficult weather at that time in his life when he had a massive exhibition coming up and he needed great paintings then perhaps he would never have discovered his series at all right holly i don't believe it there's ian is ian yes hello oh hello really good oh you've caught me i've been a clock off now this was superb we loved it beautiful isn't it see you tomorrow excellent nice to meet you bye it's a small world so nice they're lovely aren't they a huge thank you to all of our patrons at la land who are making this vlog possible especially our duffer and dauphine of la land jaedel and ether alice allen anna brandon and john michael daniela down vanda denise berenstein albanacovich linda c bradley veronica castillo donna davis zoe dork sakura dennis laura de mari jackie ellison nicholas w fairfax tracy ferrari caroline first of brenda gibbons abigail grant brenda harris delaine holbrook kim hasselhoff jacqueline holmes helen jacobs jimmy kemp david and summer la land janet hoff lombard shannon maitland meredith nina messick robert miller cathy nuri jc award mp maureen palmer tamara price tonya renee yvonne and peter richards rjb candy robertson bettina rojack hanny ross barbra schmelzer's friend schreiber lisa schultz jennifer shanks nancy simmons patty suhu susan stevens sarah thornton colleen troyer brandy walton aaron windish greg wood david young and lodovico zodonazzo and thank you to all of you [Music] you

Channel: The Chateau Diaries

Views: 98,577

Keywords: chateau de lalande, chateau diaries, chatelaine, dream chateau, escape to the chateau diy, french country house, french country living, stephanie chateau, stephanie jarvis, the chateau diaries, chateau, chateau renovation, doing it ourselves, escape to chateau, diy, patreon, french heritage, fresselines, monet, creuse, claude monet, monet's series paintings, art history, french culture, french tradition, visiting france, hidden treasures, hidden treasures of France

Id: _1ktkmBpavQ

Length: 31min 25sec (1885 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 26 2020