THE INITIATION,
growing up surrounded by artists and creators...

Léon Monet and his granddaughter

Françoise was born during the «Roaring Twenties». A time of freedom, of Art Deco creations, when women were muses and liberated. Paris is a party, the Normandy province celebrates its impressionists: Claude Monet died just after his birth, but after the dark years and the humiliations of his early years, the consecration took place during his lifetime. In 1917, he received his fi rst public commission, impressionism resonated throughout the world and in 1927, the extraordinary exhibition of water lilies at the Musée de l’Orangerie opened its doors to the public. It was one of the largest monumental works of the time, the «Sistine Chapel of Impressionism», as the painter André Masson rightly said.

Orangerie Museum - Paris

But in Maromme, the Monet did not derive any glory from it. They were not worldly and had known for a long time that the Impressionists had the gift of moving the whole world. The war was approaching, it was necessary to face up to it and the young girl lived through this period of uncertainty and fear as a teenager: the occupation, the bombings, the exodus, France cut in two and liberated, before coming of age and living through these years of unprecedented economic expansion known as the «30 glorious years» from the post-war period until the 1970s.

Claude Monet, Auguste renoir - Oils on canvas

For Françoise, art is a matter of course. A daily routine. Living all her youth with the paintings of Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley or Auguste Renoir on her walls is not exceptional and it is quite natural that she draws and paints when she feels like it, spending her whole childhood in her grandfather’s house in Maromme, whom she never knew. More than her rather distant mother, it was her grandmother, Aurélie Monet, who passed on to her love of cooking, the art of entertaining that made Maromme famous in the days of the artists, and perhaps also her sense of humor and her freedom of thought.

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