Restored Seine Inn Recalls Fauvism’s Ambience

The Seine rarely dances in Paris.

Surrounded by city, unconnected to nature, it’s a sullen, dark river, industrially trafficked and plowed to an incessant tourist highway. A green river; sometimes, a gray-blue shade like steel, along a high corridor of stone.

Only as the Seine approaches suburban precincts does the river’s lively brasher color, the silver of sunlight played on water, return.

To follow that color a scant 20 minutes west of Paris to the island of Chatou, is to travel to Maison Fournaise and the island that inspired 19th- and turn-of-the-century artists, including the Fauvists, who now are celebrated in an exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

In a series of graceful crescent turns, the Seine sweeps west through forests before descending into the countryside of its valley.

At the island of Chatou, kingfishers dive and barges slow as a procession of mid-river islands emerge through overhanging woodland. Between steep green banks, the river narrows. Light diffused in curtaining forests deepens the colors of nature with shadows creating scenes like an Impressionist painting. Briefly, ghostlike, through a line of trees, a balcony appears on a tall brick mansion.

Once forgotten, then nearly lost, the Maison Fournaise’s familiar iron rail and awning remind us of the island auberges; restaurants and inns lining the river before Paris’ outlying districts became commuter bedrooms. It was a time when scenes from Maurice de Vlaminck’s “Landscape Near Chatou” and Pierre Auguste Renoir’s “The Luncheon of the Boating Party” played along the Seine.

Perhaps Renoir’s best-known work, “The Boating Party” and others depict the island of Chatou and its Maison Fournaise, a river-side inn recently reopened as Restaurant Fournaise, where the artists found the bright summer light and colors, characters and cafe ambience destined to become their canvases.

“I have been detained at Chatou because of my painting,” Renoir wrote a friend while completing “The Boating Party.” “If you would be so kind to come and dine with me here, you will not regret the journey . . . this is the most beautiful place in the whole of Paris.”

He was not alone in his appreciation.

Other Impressionists traveled the distance by train to paint Chatou’s parklike scenes, including Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Georges Pierre Seurat, Vincent van Gogh, Edouard Manet, Paul Gauguin, Alfred Sisley and Camille Pissarro.

Later, Fauvists Andre Derain and Vlaminck came to haunt the Fournaise dining room along with still more artists, writers and poets, whose souvenir drawings and verse remain scrawled over its walls. Vlaminck even located his studio at the base of the Chatou Bridge.

Today, after a 15-year-long restoration battle, luncheon again is being served--on the balcony of Maison Fournaise.

With a combined $1 million raised from local and French governments, and sizable private sector donations from Los Angeles and Washington, the once-derelict inn has undergone painstaking restoration. Reopened Oct. 13 as a restaurant, museum and gallery, it is nothing short of magic, offering every evidence of being what Henri Claudel, president of the Friends of the Maison Fournaise, calls “a historic souvenir.”

Opened as a boathouse by Alphonse Fournaise in 1860, the family-run inn was already a noted country rendezvous, filling weekends with the fashion of rowing parties and evening dances for a clientele of politicians and writers.

“The chic thing,” observed Renoir, “was to bring your girlfriends to Chatou on Sundays and take them rowing. Some even left them there for several days to get the full benefit of the fresh air.”

When the general Parisian rage for rowing faded at the turn of the century, Chatou continued to hold its attraction to artists and writers. Matisse and the poet Apollinaire came frequently after 1890 to visit. In 1906, nearly blind, Degas paid a final call.

“There was a magic to the islands of the Seine. A unique atmosphere to the auberges along the river,” suggests Claudel. “They were a meeting place. Artists met writers and mixed with poets in them.

“But there was no other auberge like this. This was a restaurant Parisien descended into country.”

Fifteen years ago, Claudel, a former French diplomat, was one of the few who recalled this from his own boyhood. Along the river, Maison Fournaise was then an oft-flooded ruin slated for demolition when volunteers began a last-minute preservation effort.

Winning a four-year campaign for city acquisition, they confronted the paperwork involved in historic monument designation and began a 10-year “stop-and-start-over-again” funding drive. “These things take time,” says a smiling Claudel, the deputy mayor of hillside Chatou, “because we were working with the government.”

Efforts paid off.

The Maison’s high mansard roof of slate and rambling courtyard have been repaired. The brick-and-plaster red of its toothed stone front were restored, and cracked bottle panes bordering its stained glass windows replaced. Artists retouched Realier-Dumas’ large humorous trompe l’oeil decorations on its face. The interior is no less significant. Not content to restore Maison to a museum piece with modern art gallery and exhibits, the association dedicated itself to ambitious work.

Behind a carved carriage entry, a period brasserie near the inn’s courtyard canoe sheds offers garden dining. Above, through narrow stairwells, the Fournaise’s celebrated second-story restaurant has emerged after a three-year restoration as a detailed reflection of its former glory.

Inside, changes are remarkable. The courtyard entry, originally a dark passageway formed of exposed timber between wings, has been incorporated into a post-modern design. Covered with bright tile, it is a proud and striking transformation, leading to a period brasserie .

Two semi-circular stairwells have replaced the step landings behind and lead to the original dining room and a large museum space installed beneath peaked beams.

By removing interior walls and modernizing the kitchen, project architects have enhanced its sense of light and air. Turning the room fully onto the iron balcony (originally added in 1877 as an afterthought with elaborate entwined “AF” initials), they’ve created a corner overlook on the river.

Through tall, fold-back glass doors (“the same ones as in Renoir’s time,” Claudel notes) below the drape of a striped awning, the balcony that wraps the building like a ship’s prow leads to a small dance pavilion behind.

Research for the facsimile restaurant even extended to cloth for tables and cuisine, says Claudel. “Like Madame Fournaise’s own, it’s not fancy, just une bonne cuisine familiale. “

There was, however, one undisclosed consideration. Last winter, workmen removing plaster and ragged wallpaper covered with guest signatures revealed six unknown frescoes that now blaze the interior with bright, comical fairground scenes of chimps and soldiers.

An adjacent space has been added to the dining room, the Salle Monet, decorated with garden murals that evoke the flavor and feel of the Impressionist era. Four seasonal menus have been created, largely around dishes originally served and renowned for drawing rowers in off the river.

This countrified Parisian-style cuisine of several courses features fish and poultry and includes terrines from original Fournaise recipes. The brasserie , cafe and terrace offer prix fixe menus, largely hot or cold plate lunches with salad, coffee and pastry. Particular attention has also been paid to the wine offerings, which are comprehensive and affordably priced.

Encouraged by their renovation of Maison Fournaise, volunteers have now acquired a neighboring structure and “all that will be converted to ateliers, perhaps a dozen or more,” Claudel says. Designed to achieve a lively arts-and-museum “island of the Impressionists” colony, these will be leased to artists and galleries.

Since this summer, small boats and pleasure crafts have begun returning, curious owners mooring along an arched wooden railway bridge built in 1860, walking a trail along the island to inspect construction.

In June, 1991, Chatou plans major expansion of its annual costumed Impressionist Festival, which already attracts thousands for art shows and races, while negotiations are presently under way to open direct passenger ferry service between Chatou and Giverny, 90 minutes downriver.

“This will all be very much alive again,” says Claudel, on the balcony where Renoir’s easel once stood. “With its terraces open and summer dancing, the young will come for lunch, the ateliers will be crowded with artists.

“It’s important for art. And, with the river, it’s very pretty in spring.”

(The 175-work show, “The Fauve Landscape,” will continue at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art through Dec. 30.)