Writing from the Heart, Reading for the Road

A Peek Ahead at the Year of Renoir

January 15, 2017 at 11:08 am Leave a comment

This year is the Year of Renoir not just in Essoyes, but throughout l’Aube, the département in which Essoyes is located, in the Champagne region of France.

Essoyes is situated just a couple of hours southeast of Paris,  very close to the border of Burgundy. Could there be a more perfect location? Well, many of us don’t think so.  🙂

In any case, why is this the Year of Renoir? And what will there be to see and do in l’Aube this year? I’ll be posting details of upcoming events from time to time, but for now I just want to give you a peek at a few of them, and suggest that you might want to mark your calendars for a visit to Essoyes–and Troyes–in 2017!

The Maison Renoir in Essoyes, currently undergoing a major renovation. It will open to the public in June. Photo by Janet Hulstrand.

The opening of the Renoir home, currently undergoing a 600,000 Euro renovation, is the big, central event, and the reason the département has decided to designate this year the Year of Renoir. This is the home in which Pierre Auguste Renoir and his wife, Aline Charigot–who was born and raised in Essoyes–lived with their family much of the time, from the late 1800s until Renoir’s problems with arthritis forced a move to the South of France. This is also the home in which Jean Renoir spent many of his happiest times as a boy.

The house will open to the public on June 3. This is a very exciting event indeed: until recently the house was still being used as a summer and weekend home for Sophie Renoir, a great-granddaughter of the painter, and her family. A few years ago the village purchased the home, and the renovation now underway will offer visitors to du côté Renoir, an interpretive center dedicated to educating visitors about the life of the Renoir family in this village, a much more complete, and more satisfying, sense of their life in Essoyes at the turn of the twentieth century.

During the weekend of July 22-23, the village will recreate life in Essoyes in the year 1900. And throughout the summer there will be special events planned in Essoyes, in the surrounding area, and in Troyes, which is a wonderful city to visit at any time in any case. One of these events is a Renoir exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Troyes, which will include, among other things, a famous portrait of “la belle Gabrielle,”  who, as a cousin of Mme. Renoir, beloved nanny of Jean Renoir, and one of Renoir’s favorite models, is perhaps the second most famous Essoyenne, after Mme. Renoir herself.

I’ll be posting soon about other events being planned, including a weekend celebrating the work of Jean Renoir. And you can find details of upcoming events as they are being released by the département de l’Aube, here.  So stay tuned!

Janet Hulstrand is a writer, editor, writing coach, and teacher of writing and of literature who divides her time between the U.S. and France. She leads book groups at the American Library in Paris, writing workshops in Essoyes, a village in the Champagne region, and teaches “Paris: A Literary Adventure” each summer in Paris for Queens College, CUNY.

Entry filed under: About Essoyes, About France. Tags: art, Aube, Auguste Renoir, champagne, essoyes, France, French painters homes, Jean Renoir, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Renoir, tourism, Troyes, Year of Renoir.