Paris_ The Collected Traveler - Barrie Kerper [224]
Picasso
A Life of Picasso: The Prodigy, 1881–1906; The Cubist Rebel: 1907–1916; and The Triumphant Years: 1917–1932, all by John Richardson and published by Knopf (2007).
Life with Picasso, Françoise Gilot and Carlton Lake (McGraw Hill, 1964). Gilot and Picasso never married but had two children together, Paloma and Claude; Gilot later married Jonas Salk in 1970. If you admire Gilot as much as I do, you may know she’s an accomplished artist in her own right: see Stone Echoes: Original Prints by Françoise Gilot, edited by Mel Yoakum (Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College, 1995) for her printmaking oeuvre and Françoise Gilot: Monograph 1940–2000, Mel Yoakum and Dina Vierny (Acatos, 2001) for her oil paintings and works on paper.
Picasso: A Biography, Patrick O’Brian (Collins, 1976).
The Success and Failure of Picasso, John Berger (Penguin, 1965; Pantheon, 1989).
Renoir, My Father, Jean Renoir (Little, Brown, 1962; New York Review Books Classics, 2001).
Rodin: A Biography, Frederic Grunfeld (Henry Holt, 1987).
Rodin: The Shape of Genius, Ruth Butler (Yale University Press, 1993).
Saint-Exupéry: A Biography, Stacy Schiff (Knopf, 1994).
Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited, Vladimir Nabokov (Harper & Bros., 1951; Vintage, 1989, revised edition).
Toulouse-Lautrec: A Life, Julia Frey (Viking, 1994).
Zola: A Life, Frederick Brown (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995).
The history of Paris lies in her buildings and monuments. That of the Parisians in a host of little details.
—Cahier de Paris
THE ÎLE-DE-FRANCE
AND BEYOND:
EXCURSIONS FROM PARIS
To understand French landscape one must visit the Île-de-France, that region northwest of Paris where small villages nestle in gently rolling hills covered with fruit trees and flowers. The human scale of the land, the humbleness of the steeple of every village church evoke another age.
—ALEXANDER LIBERMAN, The Artist in His Studio
PARIS IS INEXHAUSTIBLE, but visitors wishing to explore outside of the city—and I do encourage exploring the environs—will find there is practically unlimited choice in what to see and where to go. (Some journeys will even have you back in Paris in time for dinner.) Within easy striking distance from the city, in the Île-de-France (of which Paris is a part), the options are many: the Château de Versailles; the forêt de Fontainebleau; the village of Barbizon with its showcase of pre-Impressionist landscape artists; the beautiful gardens at Marly-le-Roi; the châteaux at Saint-Germain-en-Laye and Chantilly; the village of Auvers-sur-Oise, where Van Gogh spent his final years and also frequented by another nineteenth-century painter, Charles-François Daubigny; the fabulous Musée National de la Renaissance in the Château d’Ecouen; the exquisite château of Vaux-le-Vicomte, built in the seventeenth century by Nicolas Fouquet, Louis XIV’s finance minister (French history buffs may recall that the château was so stunning, and the housewarming ball Fouquet hosted so over-the-top, that the jealous Sun King imprisoned Fouquet and hired the very same team of architect Louis Le Vau, garden designer André Le Nôtre, and decorator Charles Le Brun to redesign Versailles). In nearby Normandy, there are the D-Day landing beaches and museums, and Claude Monet’s house and studio, where he painted his famous water lilies, in Giverny. The châteaux of the Loire Valley could easily occupy a full week’s time, the pretty coastline of Brittany beckons, and the distinctly northern city of Lille, in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region, is a mere one-hour train ride from Paris.… As you can see, it’s difficult to decide!
INTERVIEW
David Downie and Alison Harris
For many visitors the decision for an excursion is easy: Burgundy—with its outstanding,