Category Archives: France

Arras

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I was rather surprised at having to give my name and date of birth in order to buy a return ticket to Arras over the counter. The foreigness of foreign countries, I suppose. Even stranger: the tickets were also emailed to me and I have no recollection of giving SNCF my email. It must have been in the far-off pre-Covid years when buying European train tickets was as common for me as buying a return to Manchester.

Anyway – Arras. It’s been on my mind to visit for so long that I can’t remember what prompted the inclination. It’s small but perfectly formed: improved even, since its post-WWI rebuilding means that there is a lift in the belfry to take you most of the way up to the top! Less brilliant was descending the staircase as the bells began to strike 11. It was a pleasure to wander around the Flemish-style squares in the sunshine, although my visit was shorter than expected since the Musée des Beaux Arts is closed for renovation.

There was a little slice of French tradition in the charcuterie; a bit of a conflict between my dining preferences and my respect for other traditions there, but I’m sure the French can cope with that.

From the upper deck of the train I had ample opportunity to appreciate the dullness of the landscape: an occasional leftover spoil heap was a major feature. I shall be glad to see rolling hills again. But I suppose farming was another source of the region’s wealth back in the day, along with the coal mines and the textile factories.

Lille and Roubaix

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I have settled in. My hotel room is fairly charmless apart from the windows and the view, and I’ll settle for that.

Lille is a pleasure to walk around. It’s both Flemish and French, and you never know which style you will find. The centre looks prosperous, but I’m not sure how far that prosperity stretches. Some of it has spread out to Roubaix, where I went today to visit La Piscine gallery. I caught the métro and wondered why I had such a clear view at the front of the train. It took me a little to realise that there was no driver.

This is the third time I’ve been here, so there was nothing new – just a different way of looking at things. Plus of course trying to capture the reflected sunburst window in all its glory.

I rather liked the way the statues had been placed, with the over-dressed gentlemen surrounded by nymphs. Then all the paintings by Rémy Cogghe – so well done, but who has heard of him? I smiled to see the resemblance between his self-portraits and the painting of his mother.

Lille

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I arrived in Lille in brilliant sunshine and a rather bewildered state of mind. The travel sickness pill I had taken left me feeling detached; moreover I was bothered by not being able to make sense of the French I heard all around me. I’d caught an earlier train in order to visit the Palais des Beaux Arts – but even that just added to the sense of being all at sea.

It’s a very imposing building – but one that weighed down on me. Room after room after room, each leading into the other . . . there was way too much stuff! Once again, I realised how artists’ studios churned out paintings to fill churches and to immortalise the wealthy in oils. I quickly decided I did NOT want to see any more putrefying flesh – even painted by Rubens – or horrible mash-ups of Flemish-painter-meets-the-Renaissance. I found it hard to maintain the appetite to take in anything at all.

There were a couple of copies of paintings by Brueghel the Elder. Both had religious themes (the census at Bethlehem and John the Baptist preaching) but – in true Brueghel style and exactly as Auden describes it – the titular action is a small part of a much bigger picture that teems with everyday, unimportant people doing everyday, unimportant things. So different from all those depositions and raisings and martyrdoms which completely filled their large frames and which I found so lowering. When I got to the portraits – all so indistinguishable! – I wondered what I should choose to be painted in to signify the 21st-century equivalent of status and piety. Obviously not furs and a rosary; perhaps in cashmere with my ArtFund card between my fingers.

I came across Léon Frédéric again – not quite as weird to my eyes as others of his. St Francis in a Flemish landscape – which brought me back to Brueghel. By the end I was utterly bewildered: the journey from gruesome biblical scenes to abstraction was too much to take in.

Finding somewhere for dinner just added to the confusion. It seemed as if meat was still the only French food on the menu! Pig’s ears, andouillettes, marrow bone . . . But I found something in the end and finished off with lots of cheese.