The Valley of the Painters
Once upon a time... The Valley of Painters: Between Berry and Limousin, located between the departments of Indre and Creuse, this place is the meeting point between nature and art, a place where Impressionism took shape almost 150 years ago.
©Ludovic Chabert - The 4 Vandrouilleurs This landscape is so rich that painters didn't know where to stop. Indeed, it was in the 19th-century French countryside, near Crozant, that this famous artistic movement was born. Artists such as Claude Monet and Armand Guillaumin were drawn to the unspoiled landscapes of the Vallée de la Creuse, immortalize its natural beauty.
New emotionsvelles
Painters come to seek new emotionsvelles, freed from the constraints of the studio, with the development of paint tubes. And, from the middle of the 19th century, thanks to the railway, these Impressionists in search of "open-air painting" set up their easels on the banks of the Creuse, the Gargilesse, the Petite Creuse and the Sédelle. Thus came Jules and Victor Dupré, Théodore Rousseau, Constant Troyon... Vallée de la Creuse is experiencing a real craze and attracts great masters, such as Claude Monet Fresselines, who made this valley a center of Impressionism. He was succeeded by Armand Guillaumin in Crozant, who became the leader of the Valley's painters.
Claude Monet and the Valley of Painters
The poet Maurice Rollinat, also charmed, settled in Fresselines. Until the 1930s, Post-Impressionists such as Fernand Maillaud and Léon Detroy, and Expressionists such as Anders Osterlind and Emile-Othon Friesz, right up to the avant-garde Francis Picabia, continued to frequent these never-exhausted sites.
These paintings between Berry and Limousin are exhibited in museums around the world, Paris, Copenhagen, Geneva, Cambridge, Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Chicago… Today the landscape has evolved, a new valley is being invented while retaining its charm, its beauty and its preserved nature.
George Sand and the Valley of the Painters“Everything fires the imagination… everything tugs at the heartstrings.” declared George Sand about this valley. Moreover, it was here that she imagined part of her novel The sins of Mr. Antoine. In a letter to Delacroix, she tells him that she comes every year to see the ruins of Crozant, and every year she shouts her name seven times.