Uncovering the Art of Living, French Style
From the desk of our recent guest and Friend, DeeGee Lester
Generation after generation, the lure of France – attracting the artistic, the romantic, the avant-garde, and the cultural dilettante – remains intense. Your own long-dreamed-of journey there could provide an experience identical to that of every other traveler. But the newly-launched France With Friends offers a rare cultural immersion on a personal and intellectual level you have always envisioned.
Anchored by the distinctive familial, historic, and artistic roots of its founder and host, Amélie de Gaulle, France With Friends weaves together an experiential tapestry of idyllic country life and exciting excursions, with engaging workshops of growth and discovery. Each aspect of this unique program explores and gives full expression to uncovering the art of living embodied by the French.
Whether first-time visitor or seasoned traveler, participants can avoid the rote memorization of a flag-hoisting, “follow-me” tour guide, or the confusion of “going it alone”. Instead, de Gaulle, the great niece of World War II General and post-war French President Charles de Gaulle, brings a distinctive level of expertise and unique connections that make possible genuine surprises unavailable on a traditional visit to France.
Located forty minutes by train from Paris in the enchanting village of Valmondois, this all-inclusiveworkshop and cultural immersion program takes place in an award-winning village bed and breakfast, part of a Amélie’s ancestral home belonging to her brother, Laurent de Gaulle. It was here that, throughout childhood, she and her siblings would spend summers and weekends away from Paris, frolicking through fields and village. As an interior designer, she also follows a line of artistic roots through four generations of sculptors and artists dating back to Victor Adolphe Geoffroy-Dechaume (famed stone sculptor whose cathedral restorations included Notre Dame), and whose descendants have included sculptors and portrait painters for royalty and the aristocracy.
Even today the home, established in 1838 and lovingly restored by Laurent, immediately evokes the calming, slower pace of earlier times. Sitting flush with the village sidewalk, the pale gray stone exterior features enormous wooden doors. The clanging of the bell and opening of those doors reveals a large covered porte cocherethrough which wagons once passed. Stepping into the cobbled drive, a palette of color and textures awaits. Bas reliefs and art line the salmon walls of the porte cochere, opening to a gravel central courtyard and across to a dramatic, flower-bedecked center stone stairway rising to the left and right up the hill. It is that garden overlooking the historic home that serves as an outdoor studio for oil painting workshops during your stay.
The France With Friends art workshops with Greg Decker lifts a visit to this culturally rich nation to a new level. Like generations of artists from across the globe who were drawn instinctively to the streets and studios of Paris, or to the French villages and countryside for plein-air painting, the modern workshop participant becomes infused with an awareness of the every-changing light and shape and shadow surrounding them.
Decker has a depth of knowledge and long experience as both artist and teacher (including stints as a teaching artist at both MOMA and the Met in New York). His patient, yet persistent attention to the efforts of each participant within his atelier brings out surprising, unexpected works from even the most inexperienced of students.
In stark contrast to the popular workshop trend of “drink wine and paint whatever you like,” Decker begins with the geography of the palette. Utilizing the France With Friends full artistic kit and portable easel provided for each student artist, he counsels on the compositional techniques of classical painting, on the use of texture to bring certain elements forward, and the use of under-painting to bring out, with intention, specific contrasting and tonal effects in the finished work.
The selected painting locations, whether garden setting or on the hills overlooking fields and distant villages, creates in each participant a special artist bond with those spirits – Van Gogh, Daubigny, Corot, Daumier – who once tramped these same fields with paints and brushes, easels and canvasses in hand.
On those plein-air days, workshop participants mount a steep hill (be sure to bring good walking shoes), to a vast plateau that stretches all the way to Normandy in the west, and provides, on sunny days, a glimpse of the top of the Eiffel Tower to the south. Sometimes, struggling against the ever-changing light and brisk winds, the workshop artists feel a special comradery with the masters who, heretofore, were only names and illuminated paintings on gallery walls. The experience is exhilarating and transformational as each student artist emerges from their 10-day French journey with several works of their own artistic creation.
In addition to the oil painting workshop, France With Friends offers other atelier opportunities. Parisian chef, Nathalie Guiral utilizes this the magnificent space in this village bed and breakfast, introducing a palette of tastes. The cuisine experience includes wine tasting and pairings, luring participants into the French love affair with food – the long, delicious indulgences in taste and smell that will forever alter the way we relate to what we eat, and how we eat.
Another offers the ultimate escape from the stress of life through art of health and beauty master, Cecile Cotten, who has been featured in top fashion publications. The slow, refreshing pace of Valmondois, combined with organic herbal spa treatments and Japanese massage therapy, has restoration powers, and secrets that are jealously guarded by Cotten’s devoted clientele.
Each culturally immersive atelier experiences include specially designed excursions, with surprising moments of discovery and private events that would not be available without de Gaulle’s massive connections. Each cohort of France With Friends will offer carefully curated outings which may vary from group to group. The inaugural painting workshop cohort, for
Another example, explored regional sites and delved deeply into the locations associated with its famous artists; not merely lookingat their works, but connecting with the intimate environments of their lives in places such as Auvers sur Oise, hearing stories of their friendships, and then expanding outward to view their art in Paris.
With strict limitations of size and exclusivity of rooms, France With Friends offers the feeling more of “family” than “tour group”. Sans television and the noise of a city, each unique room, is decorated in French country style with large windows opening either onto the tiered garden or toward the village square, and features comfortable beds and modern bathrooms. One unexpected interior architectural is a gigantic wooden crane hoist tucked under the roof above the upper floor’s convivial music room, location for the nightly aperitif of selected wines and hors d’oeuvres accompanied by music and conversation.
The feeling of family extends to mealtime and the caring hospitality of Laurent, bringing to the great table the joy of long conversation and the indulgence of the best in family style French cuisine featuring fresh-baked breads and home-made jams, meats and home-grown organic vegetables – each carefully prepared with a unique twist that makes it a delight to both taste and smell- and accompanied by specially-chosen wines.
Each hour of these ten days is a grateful reminder that while others can go to France, you have chosen to indulge in your ideal of France with moments of discovery and the bonding of friendship through the shared experience of France With Friends.