Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 22, 1993 TAG: 9308220177
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By Christopher Reynolds
DATELINE: HONFLEUR, FRANCE LENGTH: Long
Then I'll give the authorities my answer: Eric Boudet de Dramard.
Eric Boudet de Dramard is a retired Frenchman and oil painter I found on the waterfront at Honfleur, which is a town of 8,000 on France's Normandy coast, near the mouth of the Seine. It's where many of the Impressionists came in the 19th century. And it is one of the most picturesque towns in Western Civilization.
Dramard, 61, has been painting here for about 20 years, on and off. He sets up his easel, steadies his brush hand with his left forearm, and spends hours tracing on canvas the wind-blown sails, the geometry of the harbor, the aged buildings and their rippling mirror images. Every once in a while, a visitor will interrupt him to offer several hundred francs for one of his paintings, which he'll take. They'll chat a bit, and then he'll go back to the canvas, the rippling water, the drying nets. ...
And then, in the middle of all this, Dramard will complain.
"Seventy galleries now," he'll growl, nodding toward the art works in windows all down the street. "Before, there were ships." And then he'll resolve to drive out the next day to gray, industrial Le Havre, where the fishmongers are more genuine.
It wouldn't be a perfect life, after all, unless you had the satisfaction of complaining.
Maybe, given enough time, I would complain, too. Like San Francisco's waterfront, Honfleur's poses at least as much as it works. But that's why all these wonderful restaurants and galleries have alighted here (though Dramard's estimate of 70 looked a little high to me). It's also why the buildings are so well-restored. And in the outer harbor, 20 yards beyond the scores of Channel-crossing English pleasure craft along the Old Dock, there is some honest work getting done. Their ranks may have thinned, but the fishermen of Honfleur still mend nets, paint their hulls in bright purples, reds and yellows, and chug out to sea. Basically, Monsieur Dramard has it made.
All of Honfleur radiates from the Old Dock. In the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, exploratory voyages to North America originated here. A governor appointed by the king held court in the Lieutenance building, overlooking the passage to the English Channel. Norman shipbuilders put up houses in the surrounding hills, and a handful of landmark churches arose. By that time, the Hotel du Cheval Blanc was already a longstanding business, having opened in its waterfront location about 1460.
Five centuries and countless renovations later, all those buildings are intact, and the Cheval Blanc is still a hotel. Owner Alain Petit can lead curious strangers to the oldest beams, or to Room 30, where Monet and others are said to have capitalized on its broad, bird's-eye view of 19th century activity on the waterfront.
The Cheval Blanc's rooms have more character than luxury, but they're not rooted in the 15th century. In the course of gradual renovations, Petit and his wife, Elisabeth, have added such modern conveniences as built-in hair dryers.
The other buildings surrounding the Old Dock are similarly venerable. On one side, St. Catherine Quay, they rise to narrow slate-and-timber heights of five to seven stories, housing restaurants or galleries on the ground floors. One morning I took an early breakfast under the yellow awning of L'Albatros, a bar and snack shop on St. Catherine Quay, and stared across the dock waters while the first day's duties were performed. Out among the working boats along the port, engines coughed and hummed. Down among the pleasure boats, someone named Nigel was implored to pull a line in. All around me, workers restocked bars, unstacked patio chairs, unfurled parasols, ran up flags, wiped dew from tables, trundled kegs, brandished baguettes.
The rest of Honfleur and environs is an elaboration on the Old Dock's themes: pretty pictures and working sailors. The Eugene Boudin Museum was a logical first stop.
Boudin, born in Honfleur in 1824, was a painter who favored sunlit landscapes. In the 1850s, he took a young Claude Monet under his wing, and led a gaggle of painters with rebellious outdoorsy ideas. They gathered often at the Saint Simeon Inn, on a hillside on the west edge of town, to paint, eat and generally commune.
The result was early Impressionism (so named by a critic who didn't much care for it), which introduced artists throughout Europe to the idea that an artist's subjective perception of light and shape could bring just as much to a painter's work as the objective reality of the scene. On Impressionist canvases, the waters of the Old Dock shimmer in a rainbow of colors, and the beaches near Trouville glow under the rays of a different sun.
Overshadowed by competing institutions in Europe and North America, the Boudin museum has nevertheless managed to gather and hold onto many locally produced works by Boudin, Monet, Camille Corot and others, including a good number that depict scenes still visible around town.
Out on the west edge of town, meanwhile, the Saint Simeon Inn has evolved into the Ferme Saint Simeon, and remains open for business.
Overlooking the Seine's headwaters and shaded by 100-foot trees, Ferme Saint Simeon now offers the 43 most luxurious hotel rooms and the priciest restaurant in Honfleur. It's very quiet, with immaculate grassy grounds and a hedge that rises just high enough to spare diners the view of LeHavre's distant smokestacks across the Seine. Michelin gives the restaurant one star. The restaurant gave me an agreeable lunch, for $60 without wine, from a menu heavy in local seafood.
The rooms are intricately decorated, each according to a different scheme. Those I saw featured bold, colorful wall coverings and roomy, modern bathrooms. In any event, those who make the hike to Ferme Saint Simeon should recognize that prices have changed plenty since the Impressionists' day. Rooms start at just under $200 nightly, and the establishment's exclusive atmosphere does not encourage inspection by casual visitors.
The sailors' side of Honfleur history turns up most obviously in the Museum of Old Honfleur, which is in a former church on St. Etienne Quay. Inside, curators have gathered models and documents that trace shipbuilding and fishing customs - including a series of documents that deal with the 18th-Century slave trade.
Not far away, but much less obvious, is the St. Catherine Church. Unlike almost every other building in the region, the church is virtually all wood. Looking up to the barrel-vaulted ceiling, you have the sense you are standing beneath the overturned hull of a great ship. Why? Because after the close of the Hundred Years' War in the mid-15th century, Normandy's masons and architects were all too busy with reconstruction projects to undertake the church. Honfleur's shipbuilders did the job instead, using the only medium they knew.
by CNB