EXHIBITION AT LA GRANDE GALERIE, Civray, Vienne, Poitou-Charentes, France.
1st July – August 31st 2011
The two cars were packed with the remainder of the work for the exhibition at La Grande Galerie at Civray and, with Grace and Moira driving; Grace and I followed Moira, Przemek and Tilly the dog, down to Portsmouth where we boarded the “Bretagne” Brittany ferry. We slept overnight on the Ferry and Grace and I shared a two birth cabin.
We disembarked the following morning at the French port of St Malo after a good breakfast on board and then drove straight to La Grande Galerie at Civray, approximately a 6 hour journey with a few stops on the way. After being introduced to the charming English owners of the gallery - Eileen and Wally - we unloaded the work.
La Grande Galerie is well sited in Civray, a short step from one of France’s many free parking spaces. The Gallery was originally an old saw mill and has been carefully converted within a courtyard containing a two-story house facing a gated entrance. At ground level, to the right of the house, an outside area serves the café, which adjoins a shop selling linen and interesting interior design items. Next to this, accessed from the courtyard by a double sided balcony stairway, is a reception area which houses a gallery, a grand piano, an internet space and a good quality charity shop for animal welfare where I bought a “chop” which I explain below. This room has a staircase leading to the large wide Gallery above where our work was to be displayed. This runs the full width of one side of the courtyard over the reception space, the shop and the café. It is light and airy, displaying the work of many artists from all over the world. The work is varied and includes cabinet making, pottery, prints, painting, textiles etc. and is well set out. At the rear end a small area is devoted to antiques, mostly small furniture. I thought I would be spending a lot of time at the exhibition, possibly helping put the exhibition together and then invigilating but Eileen and Wally, hung and straightened all the work over 3 days for the opening and private view where we met some really interesting people and, apart from unpacking the work and the labeling, which Grace saw to, we were free to do as we wished. We then again followed Moira by car to her lovely old village of Tardiveau, a short drive away from Civray. We visited the gallery briefly several times on other days, the most memorable being the first of 2 private views. A lovely reception awaited us with wine and nibbles. The atmosphere was wonderful with both French and English visitors.
Moira
made the holiday and gave us such a good time, cooking wonderful food which we ate mostly in the garden in the evening, drinking aperitifs of “Pineau” followed by red wine in the cool of the evenings. Tilly, Moira’s dog, was really sweet too. He is old now and is a sheep dog with lovely soft long hair and a great gentle disposition.
Further afield Moira took us to a variety of different and interesting places including La Rochelle, Poitiers, Charroux, a lovely medieval town with an unusual Pisa type tower, not as high and definitely not leaning, and an open market building. We ate outside a lovely restaurant shaded from the sun in Nanteuil En-Vallée in the company of Warwickshire artist David Lewis and his wife Joan who stayed for a short while in Moira’s Gite, across the lane from Moira’s lovely house and where Przemek was staying. There is an old abbey at Nanteuil En-Vallée, and we wended our way towards it uphill through the narrow streets photographing all the picturesque old buildings along the way until we arrived at the arboretum, a lovely park with a maze which Grace in her new straw hat entered. There was a stream over which was a flowing wooden contemporary sculpture which wound its way through nearly the whole of the arboretum under the trees. The lily ponds were full of frogs, and dragon flies hovered overhead.
On another day, while Moira watched the tennis, Grace, Przemek and I went on a walk about, passing acres of sunflowers in full bloom, to Comporté, a beautiful little village not too far away with the Charente River and a lovely old water mill, now someone’s home. It was a pleasant walk through the countryside along a path through a field which one side was a field of freshly cut grain and huge cotton reel bales of straw ready for collection. Przemek could not resist paddling in a shallow water reservoir we came across, not for long as he said it was really chilling, even though the day was hot.
Moira took us to an isolated peaceful mill complex in a valley at Sommières du Clain. The mill, owned by Richard and Midge, is a lovely place where you can fish in the river or paint or sketch in the grounds which stretch across the river to their own woodlands on a steep hillside opposite the house. They take in paying guests in very nice accommodation which we were shown and met Jean who takes art classes at this lovely old mill.
http://www.moulinbois.com/
At Poitiers the imposing Hotel de Ville (Town Hall) dominates the central square. It is a grand and beautiful white building. Poitier has another Notre Dame Cathedral, an elaborate fronted medieval cathedral, different entirely from the Cathedral in Paris. The ancient pillars inside are painted in colourful geometric patterns. An image of Joan of Arc stands on the opposite side to the entrance and other saintly persons are represented here and there, and a tall intricately carved pulpit stands at the center of the building. The beautiful stained glass windows are many and full of colour.
Civray too has a lovely medieval church in the square with a similar frontage to Poitier’s cathedral but badly in need of restoration which I understand will take place at some later date. The interior too is of great interest. Civray is a very pretty little town with the river running through it, it has several bridges which are adorned with flowers, a swimming pool and I think a pétanque court. There is also a little park and the lovely narrow winding streets typical of the towns and villages of France. The narrow streets cast cool shade on hot summer days of which there were plenty.
La Rochelle is, of course, a very large modern port with ancient towers in the distance towards the sea and the beach. It has facilities for a huge number of moorings; the yachts crammed together their masts seeming to touch each other. Many are huge and must cost a vast amount of money and these are moored separately from the smaller vessels. There are many modern shops and restaurants.
We played pétanque on Moira's pétanque court which is in the centre of the village on a separate plot away from the house which has a small orchard of plums, some of which we collected and were deliciously prepared by Moira and there were apple trees. Moira (and her late husband Brian) installed the court and the villagers can use it whenever they wish. Preparations were being made for the annual village picnic to be held there. We walked through the village to a little woodland Moira owns on a steep hill which sweeps down to the river on which there is a stone place where the women of the village used to do their washing. Moira is fluent French and is well liked and received by the villagers
A really memorable day was visiting a real French flea market in the village of Gencay. I had always wanted to see a real French flea market. On arrival Moira sat talking with the first set of stall holders and obviously knew them very well and then we were introduced. The gentleman’s Christian name is the same as Van Gogh “Vincent”. He is not very old; I would say in his 30s and has a lovely young wife and an absolutely beautiful daughter of 15 whom we met later. I bought a plain white porcelain French cow milk jug from him perfect for my daughter and Vincent said it was 3 euros, not much at all, and he let me have it for 2 and a half because I had that in coins. It is worth more I think and will be well treasured. At the same time I had spotted what I thought was a vase which I felt my sister would like but I did not purchase it then. When I caught up with Moira later I mentioned it, and later on she reminded me, so we went back to Vincent’s stall and as I went to show her where the one I previously seen laid out on the floor, Moira pointed to another vase I had not noticed and asked “is it this one” and I looked at it and thought “wow”. It is opaquely pale white and yet subtly glows with a slight opal like quality, particularly at the base, and Moira pointed out the base and it is marked “Sevre”. I ended up buying both but Vincent asked so very little for them both. The first one is not a vase but a very large glass; the stem being clear glass and the bowl is a beautiful soft pink. I could see it on my sister’s bedroom window sill with an ostrich feather she has which is the same soft pink. Grace bought an unusual pot for her patio and was pleased to find a small ceramic postman figure for her Uncle who has a collection of over two hundred different postmen.
I also came away with a dark brown Chinese pen and stamp ink stand from another stall. This is really well cast though I do not know what it is made of, possibly plaster, but a really well defined scaly dragon. A few days later I found a Chinese stamp in the animal charity stall at Gallery which Moira told me is called a “chop”. Moira has one with her name written in Chinese which she bought from Beijing. I do not know the meaning of the word/s on the one I bought but will try to find out.
The market at Civray, on every Tuesday, was interesting too but was a different sort selling lovely fresh bread, fruit and fish, household goods, linen, soap, clothes and jewellery.
Moira had told me that Vincent from the flea market was very knowledgeable about antiques and that he would know how the Sevre vase was made and in the evening the day of the flea market took me to Vincent’s house. He was sitting in his garage surrounded by such interesting old things, too many to mention, and then took us to the back of the garage where there were wonderful old chandeliers hanging low from the ceiling, not crystal but with shades by all the most famous glass makers. Some of these were from the Art Deco period. We were then taken to the front of the house and sat on his veranda and given red Pineau and later a tiny pink and white meringue. It was just nice listening to them talking and I could occasionally make out a word or two and joined in here and there where I could but my French is really practically non-existent. It was so relaxing and Vincent told us the cloudy effect of the Sevre vase was obtained by the addition of arsenic which took the lives of the makers and has, of course now been stopped by law for some years.
We said goodbye to Moira early Thursday morning on 7th July 2011 and left Tardiveau by car for the first stage of our journey to the lovely medieval walled port of St Malo. The long journey went very well with many laughs. It lightly started raining as we arrived and the skies opened when we went straight to the Tourist office to find overnight accommodation. They were unable to make contact by phone so gave us an address and a map. On leaving there we were all drawn to a moored Galleon but the skies opened and we ran to a nearby bus shelter opposite taking photographs. Of course, I went back out in the rain once or twice. We all got a wetting. Map in Grace’s hand we easily found our way to the hotel, winding uphill through the shops and cafes and lovely old streets to what may have been the artists’ quarter, there were several art shops selling work close by. The hotel was not smart but clean and comfortable and our room had an ensuite which was very good and the hotel was well placed in either direction - the way we had walked up (not far) and, we found later was also near the wall by the coast. We left our overnight luggage at the hotel and after drying out and putting warmer clothes on returned to near the galleon where we took a few more shots without the rain. Grace and I took photographs of this quite quickly but Przemek got lost in his work and stayed on.
Grace and I went back inside the town wall looking for a good place to eat and finally found one within a few steps from where we were staying, after which we walked through the ancient streets to the wall by the sea and climbed to the top and walked all around. The views were fabulous and we took many photographs. It is so easy to take beautiful photographs there, they keep appearing. Finally we arrived at a point near the carousel, descended the wall and met up with Przemek.
We arrived home on the 8th July having had the most magical experience of France with Grace, Moira, Przemek and David, Joan and, of course, Tilly.
Dorothy Biddle
Photographs by Dorothy and Grace
