Friends of French Art: Deluxe Tour Funds Art Restoration

There were moments this past week when everything that was happening seemed real and right and perfectly natural.

- Like when Count Antoine de Noailles, the Prince de Poix and heir to the Chateau de Mouchy, stands over his gas barbecue and chats as he cooks lamb chops. An amiable man in his mid-30s with unruly brown hair, the prince wears copper-colored corduroy slacks, an ill-fitting tweed jacket with a paisley handkerchief in the pocket and a red-and-white striped shirt with a dark red tie. He grins lopsidedly. Yes, all the art on the walls inside are of his ancestors, “lots of grandmas and grandpas.”

- Or when a discussion of how he was losing his hearing from hunting leads to an exchange on popular music and suddenly, there you are telling Count Charles de Ganay, whose chateau you just visited, about your brother and his harmonica. And the count is so interested.

- Or finally, it’s around 8 p.m. and still light out. You’re meandering through the woods behind Chateau de Courances, which is owned by the count’s eldest brother, Marquis Jean-Louis de Ganay. An opening in the trees leads to a pond, then a long expanse of lawn, a waterfall and an exquisite Japanese garden. Back at the chateau, your host urges champagne on the guests after that long walk. But hurry, because “soup’s on.”

There’s a magical quality to this whole experience yet it’s also rather surrealistic: You’re there, but not really yourself. In real life, after all, dukes and duchesses and chateaux with turrets and deep forests are the stuff of fairy tales.

That’s part of the lure of the Friends of French Art annual house party. It’s an eight-day excursion into storybook land. But not as a tourist; rather, travel with FOFA and you’re an invited guest of the storybook people.

House Parties in France

FOFA, a Southern California-based organization, has had a house party to France every summer since 1979 and in that time has raised nearly $1 million for art restoration here. Moreover, the very existence of FOFA--its collective heads poking around unkept corners at artworks gone to ruin--has raised the consciousness of the French government and local communities where these works are located. So they’ve helped too.

If the French are pleased, they are also rather sentimental about FOFA this year. It is no secret that nine people had canceled their reservations. For some it was fear of terrorism; but at least one Texas woman who had been on the tour last year was adamantly boycotting France for refusing to allow U.S. planes in its air space during the American bombing of Libya in April. That left the tour group, which in past years had averaged around 30, at 18, plus the American free-lance film crew, which hoped to sell a film on FOFA.

At one point, says Californian Elin Vanderlip, the Norwegian-born grande dame of the Palos Verdes Peninsula who founded FOFA, she considered canceling the 1986 tour. “But then Jean Ferray, the principal inspector of historic monuments in France and the most distinguished man in French decorative art wrote ‘For God sakes don’t (cancel) or we’ll lose the momentum.’ And the French we were scheduled to visit said ‘It’s not the quantity that counts. It’s the quality.’

“So we kept the donation ($5,000 which goes directly to art restoration) of those who canceled--and which we’ll always do in the future--and here we are.”

Where they were was Brittany, spending four days busing to 19 chateaux and historic buildings. They then went on to Paris for four days where, based at the Hotel Crillon, they lunched, champagned and dined at six chateaux in the environs of Paris known as Ils de France. They also visited three museums, the late fashion designer Coco Chanel’s private apartment, the offices of the president of the French Assembly and the Paris townhouses of a count, a prominent doctor, an equally prominent gallery owner and a princess.

U.S. Ambassador to France Joe Rodgers and his wife hosted a dinner in FOFA’s honor at the U.S. Embassy, and one of Paris’ current hot restaurants, Le Beauvilliers, hosted the group’s farewell party.

In addition, the group committed itself to restoring--even before determining this year’s budget--a Renaissance ceiling in Vinan, a painting by Van Orley and, after a voice vote on the bus, a drawbridge at Tour de Bretagne (the same bridge in Renoir’s painting, “The Boating Party”).

Clearly, the arrival of FOFA in France does not go unheralded. Indeed, as Count Beraud de Vogue, whose family owns three chateaux in the Loire valley, said during a recent visit to California, “the arrival of the Friends of French Art is a very big thing. Anything Madame Vanderlip wants in France, she can have.” What Elin Vanderlip wants is nobility. She wants them offering their houses and their hospitality to FOFA.

Money Is Not Enough

Members of the Friends of French Art, after all, are people wealthy enough to put up $5,000 for the cause even before they consider the cost of the tour (air fare plus about $800). Their lives are successful, fun and exciting; their homes in Florida or Beverly Hills or Montreal are stunning and filled with beautiful things, which are enhanced by their interest in art.

Still, there just aren’t any dukes to invite to Sunday barbecue and no chateaux on the local charity house tour.

Nevertheless, affluent is only one mark of the exclusivity of the FOFA tour. Just as important are a good appetite, a taste for wine, the stamina of a mountain climber and unfailing chic.

This last is particularly important. Vanderlip is vocal about suits and ties for men and “smart suits for you ladies, please.”

To a man and woman, everyone goes along. “Elin is quite right,” said Yvonne Lenart of Brentwood, a Los Angeles County Museum of Art trustee taking the tour for her second year. “It really impresses the French that we care enough to look as good as we do--especially considering the circumstances, the long days we put in.”

Choice of shoes is much more lenient: for day, anything that’s comfortable.

A day in the life of the tour:

Minutes before 9 a.m. everyone is in the Crillon lobby. Elin Vanderlip does not tolerate stragglers. Lee Katz, a movie producer best known for “The Longest Day” and Vanderlip’s long-time companion, is already at the bus checking the day’s route with the driver. Katz is the on-site detail person: Counting heads and handling all monies, including tipping any porters and chateau help who come in contact with FOFA.

On the Chateau Trail

By 9:10 a.m. FOFA is on the road, heading down the Champs-Elysees around the Arc de Triomphe where a special D-Day Observance is in progress. The bus has a microphone, which Vanderlip uses to annotate that day’s agenda.

About Elin Vanderlip: She seems to know almost everyone and remembers everything. The widow of developer Calvin Cox Vanderlip, her family were Norwegian diplomats and her friendships are eclectic. She speaks fluent French and sent her children to school in France and Switzerland. She founded FOFA at the urging of her daughter Katrina Vanderlip de Carbonnel, a Geneva-based art conservator.

The annotated schedule includes the fact that the owner of one chateau is ill but his wife will be meeting them; that the Marquise de Ganay, who’ll be hosting the group for dinner that night, is the sister-in-law of the Duke de Mouchy at whose chateau they’ll lunch the next day. The Duke de Mouchy, who is married to former Secretary of the Treasury Douglas Dillon’s daughter Joan, won’t be there himself, however. He’s been ill, so they’ll be meeting his stepson and heir, the Prince de Poix, whose wife, as it turns out, has a sister who went to school with the Vanderlip girls, Narcissa and Katrina.

The first chateau, Dampierre, is dark and drafty.

Though Christine de Chevreuse, the daughter-in-law of the chateau’s owners, the Duke and Duchess de Chevreuse, has met the group she allows a guide to conduct the formal tour of this 17th-Century castle.

Katrina de Carbonnel serves as interpreter. The guide speaks, going on at length to describe the trompe d’oeil ceiling, the wood paneling or the statues of Minerva in the music room, which was copied after the Villa de Medici. De Carbonnel sums up in just a few words, then is corrected by the guide. Katrina de Carbonnel smiles. Juice and the day’s first wine, a dry white, are served in the living room. The young duchess, a shy blonde in a bright red suit, stands apart with Katrina de Carbonnel’s 2-year-old daughter, Alisa, who makes off with a doll, a brush and a small mirror.

The owner of Chateau de Breteuil in Choisel is also the president of La Demeure Historique, a 62-year-old organization representing 1,600 chateaux. Marquis Henri-Francois de Breteuil is a man with a mission. He inherited the 17th-Century castle in 1967 and with his wife, Severine, set out to restore it--doing much of the work themselves. The marquis is into promotion. Concerts, festivals and private functions are held on the grounds. Waxed figures representing historical personages connected with the chateau have been installed in some rooms.

Have to Be Mad

It is here that the official word comes on what it’s like to own a chateau. The marquis, who with his wife and three children live full time at the chateau, calls it a passion. His friend Guy Van der Schueren, a Belgian businessman who purchased the Chateau de Losse in Dordogne 20 years ago, says he doesn’t know any chateau owners who don’t view it as both a gift and a responsibility.

“If you don’t have the time and the money and the willingness to spend both,” he said during a lunch for FOFA at Breteuil, “then you should just leave it.”

His own castle? He grinned. “It’s true what they say about chateaux. You have to be mad to buy one, and crazy to keep it.”

The group ambled on. Talk was about moats (Breteuil’s had goats grazing), chateau architecture, garden paintings and furniture. Expertise was varied and revealed casually. Catherine Sweeney, whose main residence is in Coconut Grove, Florida, but who has homes “in lots of places” including the south of France, is an admitted garden aficionado who gives lectures on Monet’s Giverny. At Chateau de Courances where the group would dine this night, she talks about bricks and methods of glazure and how only a Chicago university had a specialty in ceramic engineering.

Maggie Wetzel, Katrina de Carbonnel and Francine Altman are caught up in a spirited discussion on the techniques of making faux trompe d’oeil tables during tea at the Chateau de Jeurre, where the group has stopped after Breteuil to explore the English garden. De Carbonnel is a professional whose resume includes the Louvre and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Wetzel is a former president of the Blue Ribbon of the Music Center who is a trustee of the County Museum of Art, and Altman is a Parisienne who has taken the FOFA trip every year because “it interests me.”

Delicate Natural Balance

Daniel Okeefe Browning, who lives in Rome when he’s not traveling and says he’s never worked a day in his life, rambles a bit about how some chateaux were fortresses, some residential, and how you can tell Breteuil was built in the early 17th Century by the use of brick and stone. Spotting a peacock on the Breteuil roof he then reaches into an endless memory for anecdotes and relates one about a friend who kept a tiger garden: Deer were kept in the garden for the tigers to feed on, but for balance, the acquaintance kept peacocks--with their terrible squawk--to warn the deer.

Back on the bus and a long drive to the Chateau de Fleury, which was divided among the counts Andre, Charles and Michel de Ganay, when their elder brother, Jean-Louis, became a marquis and inherited the nearby Chateau de Courances. Among the four brothers, there is a lot of land, enough for parks and woods and lakes and never seeing your neighbor. Not even at the boundaries.

This is a hunting family. At both chateaux, there are gun collections, hunting trophies--elephants, water buffalo, lions, zebra--on wall and floor, and hunt-related art. Both chateaux are full-time homes.

At Chateau de Fleury, books are stacked on tables: A portable typewriter sits on an antique chair, tape cassettes clutter an exquisite little marble dresser.

Pol Roger champagne is poured, just enough time for one glass before Count Charles de Ganay jumps in his Saab Turbo to lead the way to his brother’s house.

‘Highly Privileged’

It is at Chateau de Courances that everyone seems to take a deep breath. There is time to think about these people Elin Vanderlip calls the “high privileged” and why, despite the great wealth, the French seem to be much quieter about money than Americans.

There is time to study family photographs, to freshen up in the guest bath with its day bed and finely crafted antique desk.

This, as Maggie Wetzel is to repeat several times when she is particularly delighted, is why the FOFA tour is so much fun: just for these little glimpses into another way of life. And it isn’t just the chateaux. There is the apartment above the Galerie Cailleux on the Faubourg St. Honore where gallery owner Mme. Roland Michel gives the group a light lunch of little sandwiches and champagne and everyone walks around looking at her personal art collection.

“This is a gem,” Wetzel says. “And who could have known it’s here, much less yet to visit.”

Does anyone expect to drop in on a count or a duchess the next time they are in France? “Oh no, I just couldn’t,” Wetzel says, echoing the sentiments of the others on the tour this year. “Maybe some people do. And we write thank-you notes for all the hospitality. But no, I can’t see myself calling someone up and saying ‘Hi, do you remember me?’ ”

If some of the tour group goes along primarily to indulge their interest in art and their curiosity about dukes and duchesses and chateaux, others are insistent about FOFA’s purpose, the restoration of French art. And they are ready to counter those who might argue that the American charity dollar is best spent at home.

Historic Ties

Says Maggie Wetzel: “Historically the U.S. and France have always been close. If it weren’t for them we would not have won the Revolution. And much of what we restore are items too small and insignificant to get state help.”

Besides, she adds, “Once you get into the art world, you realize how much began in France.”

Exactly the thinking of Yvonne Lenart. “What we’re seeing will never, never occur again,” she says while watching Veronique Monier, who studied textile conservation in the United States on a FOFA grant, unroll an elaborate cloak and mantel of velvet threaded with gold and silver. FOFA financed its restoration, which cost $9,000.

“It’s really good to know that this art will always be here. And people, not just the French, should appreciate that.”

The tour is well timed. Almost spontaneously, around 4 p.m. Monday, the last day, once-friendly shoes turn on their owners. People limp through a private showing of Musee de l’Assistance Publique and as soon as possible pop themselves down in some hard chairs in the lobby.

Elin Vanderlip is already there. For the first time in eight years, her feet have swollen. Still, she is already talking about next year when they go to Burgandy and how she is so undeterred by this year’s dropout factor that next year she is going to raise the minimum donation to $6,000 “because it’s worth it.”

Nor is she concerned that the FOFA house party might get old. After all, she says, there are 13,000 chateaux in France.