We arrived in Fontainebleau on Saturday, so happy to stay with good friends Jerome, Marie, Alban, and Camille. They were leaving for a wedding on Sunday so we were on dog-sitting duty for Boston, their gorgeous black lab.
We spent the first few days walking around the town, visiting the Château, the marché, and taking Boston for walks around the 130 hectacres of parks and gardens. The European heatwave of 2022 finally caught up to us, and it hit us hard. The word of the day was “canicule,” French for the dog days of summer. Indeed, France was in the midst of the hottest summer on record. “Retour de la canicule en France… 2022, année de tous les records.” Luckily we had an immediate new best friend as we sought to find shade, drink water, go swimming and keep cool.
We also visited the beautiful Château de Fontainebleau, where there has been a hunting lodge for French kings since the twelfth century. But it was not until the fifteenth century and the beginning of the Renaissance era that Fontainebleau became what we see today. King Francois I built the lavish palace and recruited artists like Da Vinci to help. It became a favourite home to King Henri II and his wife, Catherine de’ Medici. It was also the favoured hunting grounds of King Henri IV (or Good King Henry) the first of the Bourbon. It was also here that Napoleon Bonaparte would make one of his primary homes. Just before his coronation was to take place, he ordered the renovation of the palace to host Pope Pius VII. The massive refurbishment took only 19 days and in 1804 he was crowned emperor in Notre Dame. The moment is famously captured in Jacques-Louis David’s painting “The Consecration of the Emperor Napoleon and the Coronation of the Empress Joséphine in Notre-Dame Cathedral on 2 December, 1804.”
It was also here, ten years later, where Napoleon signed the Treaty of Fontainebleau. An agreement between Napoleon and representatives of Austria, Russia and Prussia that ended Napoleon’s rule as emperor of the French and sent him into exile on Elba.
On Thursday we visited the town of Barbizon, a village of painters, on the edge of the Fontainebleau forest. The Barbizon School was active from 1830-1870 and is known for its influence on the pre-impressionists. Many landscape painters traveled from Paris to work in Barbizon during this time and the School also influenced a younger generation including Claude Monet, Auguste Renior and Alfred Sisley to paint the forest of Fontainebleau. We visited the homes of Théodore Rousseau and Jean-François Millet, the founders of the Barbizon School. Millet greatly influenced Vincent Van Gogh and inspired him to recreate several of Millet’s rural scenes.
We had a wonderful lunch at Le Gaulois Grill. Josh had to order a burger bien cuit (well done) for the youngest member of our party. The waitress rolled her eyes and Josh was forever scared. And unfortunately the boys would not try escargots.
the-summer-of-22.com 