I was cleaning out the basement last week, searching for a photograph to surprise my husband with on the day of his retirement, when I stumbled upon a notebook from Paris that I didn't know existed.
The cover of the notebook features Claude Monet’s Soleil couchant Sur la Sene a Lavacourt, effet d’hiver (1880), and the label on the back says Petit Palais, so that must be where I purchased it. I love the Petit Palais, which is more grand than its name suggests yet smaller than the Grand Palais directly across the street. I visited often to browse the small collection and sit in the peaceful green courtyard, which had a pond that was sometimes clear but more often green, as are so many of the ponds in Paris.
There are only three entries in the Petit Palais notebook. The first is dated August 30, 2019, and was written in Parc Monceau, which was only a block and a half from our apartment. I went to Parc Monceau several times a week to walk and sometimes to write. The August 30th entry is the beginning of a novel. The first sentence is, “It begins like this.” Well, I suppose that’s one way to start, if a bit obvious.
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During the years that I was walking and writing and thinking in Parc Monceau, I didn’t realize that Monet painted three scenes of Parc Monceau in the spring of 1876 and three more in 1878. At the time, Monet was struggling financially, selling his paintings for as little as 100 francs each.
Parc Monceau as it appears in Monet’s paintings is strikingly similar to Parc Monceau as it is today—green trees and patches of grass, well-trodden dirt paths lined with benches, locals strolling the paths. The park was conceived in 1778 by Philippe d’Orleans, Duke of Chartres, as a garden of follies, filled with architectural nods to different monuments from around the world. These charming Easter eggs positioned throughout the park only add to the magic1. The first time you wander the park, you may be surprised to find structures that resemble a Roman colonnade, an Egyptian pyramid, and Corinthian pillars.
Monet wasn’t the only artist who found inspiration in Parc Monceau. Around the same time, Gustave Caillebotte, who lived a few blocks from the park, was also painting Parc Monceau.
Caillebotte’s painting bring to mind the long walks I took on that very loop, past the green benches, day after day after day, along Allee Jacques Gamerin. The path is named for the balloonist who performed the first frameless parachute descent. On October 22, 1797, Gamerin landed in Parc Monceau in a gondola attached to a silk parachute. He would stage several more ballooning demonstrations in the park over the next few years, including a scandalous ascent involving a young woman named Citoyenne Henri. Apparently, there was some concern about “the effect that reduced air pressure might have on the organs of the delicate female body and loss of consciousness, plus the moral implications of flying in such close proximity.2”
The Joy of a Loop
But back to the path: an oval is the antithesis of a labyrinth. You always know exactly where you’ll end up. What an elliptical path lacks in mystery, it makes up for in certainty. It was a time in my life when I was often lost, yet on the path of Parc Monceau, I always ended up right where I started. I would turn right out of our building on Rue de Courcelles, right on Rue de Rembrandt, walk past the stately homes and through the wrought iron gate. From there I would turn right on Jacques Gamerin to begin the loop. In addition to the oval there is a modified cross: two broad paths intersecting roughly in the center of the park, like so:
There was often a pony wagon outside the gates on Avenue Ferdousi, from whence the ponies were brought into the park for the promenade along Allee de Comtesse de Segure. The big path was frequently redolent with pony shit, as the ponies ferried squealing, mostly delighted children back and forth along the path. The children were always shouting, “Papa! Papa!” and the papas were always looking at their phones, and the pedestrians were forever sidestepping around the pony shit and dog shit (what self-respecting Parisian would pick up after their dog in the dirt, after all?), and yet, because it was Parc Monceau, the loveliest of Paris parks, these inconveniences seemed insignificant.
At any rate, further digging led me to the Christie’s page for Le Parc Monceau by Monet, which sold in 2007 for just shy of four million USD. I was surprised to discover that Monet had lived just a few blocks from our building. In 1878, Monet moved with his family from Argenteuil in the northwest suburbs of Paris to the 8th arrondissement—specifically, 27 Rue d’Edimbourg, a building I must have passed many times without ever knowing he had once lived there. At the time of the move, Monet and his wife Camille Doncieux were expecting their third baby. Google maps indicates the building is now home to a psychology practice and a speech therapist.
The move was precipitated by storm clouds of personal and financial distress that encircled the artist…In Paris the artist sought to avoid his numerous creditors in Argenteuil, to find new subject matter and, most importantly, to attract new patrons in order to support his growing family…It is surprising to consider that such an airy and harmonious painting as Le parc Monceau was completed during a time that Monet was undergoing such serious financial setbacks and intense personal sufferings.
Among these sufferings was Camille’s illness. She would pass away in 1879, the year after Monet made the second group of Parc Monceau paintings, two years after he exhibited one of them at the famous Third Impressionist Exhibition on Rue le Peletier, the exhibition at which “the Impressionists embraced the name given to them as an insult.”
A Novel That Wasn’t
The first entry in the Petit Palais notebook, running seventeen pages, was intended to be the opening chapter of a novel. I never transcribed those pages, which are double-spaced, written in green ink, and end with a single-spaced admonishment to myself: