The Letter

Names have been changed but they do not alter the essence of this letter that J and I received. At first we could not figure out whose 'My Darlings' we could possibly be, but then the penny dropped. It is the sweetest of Christmas 'thank you' letters from one of our dear granddaughters♡

Domaine de Chantilly

The Château de Chantilly has been transformed several times over the centuries and been home to many illustrious figures in France's history. Its last resident, the Duke of Aumale, son of King Louis-Philippe, inherited Domaine de Chantilly in 1830. He was the greatest collector of his time turning the château into a stage-set for all his treasures which he bequeathed to the Institut de France in 1886 now known as the Musée Condé

Chantilly holds a magnificent collection of paintings, furnishings, manuscripts, art treasures, and books. One of the great treasures being the illuminated manuscript known as Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry which I showed at the beginning of each month on WFVM through 2013/14

The Château de Chantilly itself is one of the jewels in the crown of France's cultural heritage and well worth the journey from Paris. It is 40 km from the centre of Paris and takes just 25 mins travelling by SNCF-TER from Gare du Nord. Commencing for the first time this year it is now possible to travel to the château by coach departing from PARISCityVision ticket office in rue des Pyramides

The château sits at the confluence of the Rivers Oise and Seine and is a magnificent stone complex designed in 1560 by Jean Bullant, French renaissance architect, for Anne de Montmorency

Equestrian bronze statue of Anne de Montmorency - born 1492 at Chantilly - Honorary Knight of the Garter, he became Marshall and Constable of France

Statuary and paintings of dogs and horses feature prominently around and within the château reminding us that this was once a royal hunting estate

 

The Chapel

Surrounded by a 25 acre manicured water and parterre garden by André Le Nôtre, the landscape architect for Versailles. 

The entrance hall with its magnificent stairway

The library is home to a collection of 19,000 rare and precious books - Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry is priceless and can only be viewed by means of a facsimile

via

hunting dogs leap around a ceiling frieze

The chandeliers were objects of great beauty, each one appearing to be more exquisite than the last

La Grande Singerie - The Grand Monkey Room

Drawing room walls hand painted with monkeys and Chinese figures, typical of the taste developed in the first third of the C18th during the Regency period

Both inside and out the château sparkles and is overwhelmingly beautiful

This is the merest glimpse of the masterpieces in the collection which includes Corot, Delacroix, Ingres, Poussin, Watteau, Raphaël, Botticelli, Fra Angelico, Filippino Lippi, Van Dyck, Joshua Reynolds and Caravaggio - the list goes on and on - it is the second largest collection in France after the Louvre

French Apricot Conserve

As I fly away to Paris visiting eldest son and family why don't you bring a taste of France to your homes and make some delicious French Apricot Conserve. I have shown this recipe before, but it is so quick and easy that even a child could make it. I am not a jam maker, and would never contemplate attempting this conserve if it was not simple, life is just too short.

I purchased three packets of apricots from Lidl which worked out at £2.50 per kilo plus sugar 

1 kilo stoned apricots

750 grams sugar

That's it - two ingredients - absolutely nothing else!

Leave the washed and stoned apricots in a large bowl covered in all the sugar for at least 18 - 24 hours. After that time they will look like the photo above - this is called macerating. The apricots are now surrounded by their own concentrated viscous juice and the sugar has almost dissolved

Now bring to the boil gently 

Boiling point reached
Simmer for 20 - 25 mins

Put into warm sterilised jars, screw on lids 

and seal the French way by turning jars upside down until they cool - that's it, what could possibly be easier or quicker

♡enjoy♡

A Paris suburb

Le Vésinet is a short walk from eldest son's home, a commune in the Yvelines department, Île-de-France, which is classified in the Historic Sites inventory. It is barely a 20 minutes rail journey west of the Arc de Triomphe. 

One of the wealthiest suburbs in Paris known for its wooded avenues, mansions and lakes 

In 1837, the first railway line travelled across the ancient forest of Vésinet and Alphonse Pallu, an entrepreneur, along with the famous landscape architect Count Choulot decided to create a village in the middle of nature. 

Five lakes were constructed with small connecting rivers thus laying the groundwork for a unique and beautiful setting on which to build. The residents still abide by very strict guide lines in order to preserve and maintain their unique environment exactly as Pallu and Choulot envisaged it. 

Many personalities were seduced to settle in Le Vésinet including musicians Bizet, and Faurè, painters Vlaminck and Utrillo, the poet Apolinaire, and the philosopher Alain.

Building work first began in 1861, and one of the houses built subsequently became the home of Josephine Baker, the famous black American who wowed Parisians at the Folies Bergère in the 1920s. 

via

Josephine Baker in her famous banana costume

Her home, Le Beau Chêne was designed and built by Louis Gilbert, the fashionable architect of the day. It encapsulated the aspirations of the period when the bourgeoisie strove to emulate the lifestyle of the aristocracy.

via

Josephine bought the house in 1929 when she was by then the highest paid entertainer in Europe. Her ten bedroomed neo-Gothic château is where she lived for 18 years along with her menagerie of chickens, rabbits, goats, ducks, Ethel her chimpanzee, and her beloved cheetah, Chiquita. 

via

There is an eclectic variety of domestic architecture to be seen in Le Vésinet ranging from the modest to the stately - the neo-Gothic château to Art Nouveau splendour, Arts and Crafts houses to Belle Epoch mansions, all set along tree lined boulevards.

I am a great fan of Hector Guimard, the French Art Nouveau architect, who designed many of the iconic entrances to the Metro Stations in Paris. The one below can be seen at Porte Dauphine, the western terminus on Line 2.

via

What a delighted, therefore, to be pointed in the direction of Villa Berthe by my DiL, designed by Guimard in 1896, and showing all of his hallmark iron and stonework designs that I enjoy seeing so much.

 The home of Maurice Utrillo, painter, who specialised in Cityscapes

He was born in the Montmartre quarter of Paris to Suzanne Valadon, a bohemian painter and model. He moved to Le Vésinet in the mid 1930s, hence the style of the house. I wonder if that little room at the top was his studio?

The following is an apocryphal anecdote related by Diego Rivera to Ruth Bakwin (an American collector of his work) concerning Utrillo's paternity "After Maurice was born to Suzanne Valadon, she went to Renoir, for whom she had modelled nine months previously. Renoir looked at the baby and said, "He can't be mine, the colour is terrible!" Next she went to Degas, for whom she had also modelled. He said, "He can't be mine, the form is terrible!" At a cafe, Valadon saw an artist she knew named Miguel Utrillo, to whom she spilled her woes. The man told her to call the baby Utrillo: "I would be glad to put my name to the work of either Renoir or Degas!" courtesy

View from the house in Le Vésinet by Maurice Utrillo   

I was fortunate to get the picture of Utrillo's house, hidden from view by a very high gate, as seen in his painting. Just as we arrived two boys from the house returned home on their bikes, and following a conversation with my DiL they kindly, but briefly, left the gates open.

Just a glimpse of The Cottage in the Wood which is hidden almost entirely by trees and entered by a large wrought iron gate. 

The cottage was lived in until fairly recently by a member of the original family who had it built. Subsequently the last owner left the house to Le Vésinet and it is now open from time to time for visits throughout the year.

Assembled in a very rustic style it was one of the first properties to be built. Whole oak logs and branches  were used for the roof and walls. Originally the roof was thatched in the so called 'English style'. However, here we would probably classify this as a Folly rather than a Cottage. 

The étiquette at the court of Louis XlV in Versailles was extremely strict. To have a retreat for himself and his maîtresse en titre of the time, the Marquise de Montespan, he built a small palace called the Grand Trianon within the grounds at Versailles. It was also a place where invited guests could take light meals with him in a more relaxed environment.

In Le Vésinet there is a pastiche of the Grand Trianon where it is known as the Palais Rose (Pink Palace).

Made of pink marble it was built by shipowner, Albert Schweitzer, cousin of Dr. Albert Schweitzer. By the time it was finished he was declared bankrupt and the Palais Rose was sold at auction. It was bought by an Indian Parisian businessman, and legend has it that he funded the purchase by selling two pearls and an emerald. He found that he had no use for it and sold it after two years to the poet Robert de Montesquiou

via

Although it looks quite modest in size it actually extends a long way to the rear. It is built on a mound allowing for the building at the back to be double height.

La Machine de Marly

The school our two granddaughters' attend sits alongside the River Seine. Built in the 1870s by a Welsh family called Ansell, it was known as Llesna Court, believed to be the family name spelt backwards. Before becoming the British School in Paris it was owned by a wealthy Parisian businessman called Monsieur Joly. 

The school is almost opposite La Machine de Marly which in turn is overlooked from the hillside above by Madame du Barry's Pavillon De Musique. 

via

Madame du Barry, mistress of Louis XV, had the Pavillon De Musique built in the grounds of the château in Louveciennes so that she could have views over the River Seine to Paris, it is where she spent most of her time. She commissioned Fragonard to paint a series of panels called Progress of Love for the pavillon, but at the eleventh hour Madame du Barry rejected them in favour of more pedestrian canvasses by Vien.  The Fragonard panels are now housed in the Frick Collection, New York.

via
The rejected Fragonard panels. There are now copies in situ at the pavillon

via

The machine at Marly - Alfred Sisley

La Machine de Marly completed in 1684 was used to pump water from the river which was then transported via pipes and aqueduct to the fountains in the gardens at Versailles. This view by Sisley shows a much later version of the pumping system which was adapted and changed several times over the centuries

via

A 19th century print showing a birdseye view of the water gardens, Versailles

The water system today although greatly changed still uses much of the same network of hydraulics installed by Louis XlV.

During the mid C17, when many in Paris were living frugal lives, suffering starvation, stench and disease, Louis XlV was having extensive engineering works done to draw water from the Seine with the construction in 1681 of la Machine de Marly; 14 waterwheels designed to pump 6000 cubic metres of water that were required daily to operate the fountains 10 kilometres (7 miles) away in Versailles. This was almost the same amount of water used per day by the whole of the city of Paris. 

The water from the Seine had to travel 162 metres up the steep hillside to Louveciennes where it then travelled along an Aqueduct consisting of 36 arches. The water travelled on through a series of tanks and reservoirs to the gardens at Versailles.

Charles X later under Napoléon lll built a second Marly Machine and to restore river traffic built the locks on what is known as the Island of La Loge and Gautier in the Seine

When La Machine de Marly was converted to steam and electricity in the C19 this building housed the boilers - behind it there are pipes running up the hillside

via

This old photograph shows the network of pipes leading into the main pipe which continues up the hill. The pipes were a replacement for the original Archimedes screws which lifted the water up the slope in the C17

via

These old postcards give a good impression of the size of the wheels (30ft in diameter) and the pipe running up the hill to Louveciennes  

The northern end of the aqueduct where the water came up from la Machine de Marly

a cemetery now sits beneath some of the arches of the aqueduct

This is by no means a comprehensive post on La Machine de Marly - it can only be a skeletal outline of something that was considered to be one of the great wonders of the world during the C17 and beyond. It has gone through several reincarnations and was visited by many of the leaders of the world - Peter the Great, Queen Victoria, President Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was greatly interested in the pumping system as he was looking for ways to transport water to his mountain top home in Monticello.