I don't have my notebook with me that has Renoir's address and phone number so when I was looking up P.A.R's Montmartre's address on-line I came across this article from the Wall Street Journal, January 25th 2008.
"A longtime Parisian home of Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir is on the market for €3.75 million (about $5.5 million), reduced from its listing last year of €4.5 million.
Known as the Château des Brouillards (mists), the 18th-century stone house was also the childhood home of famed filmmaker Jean Renoir, the painter's second son. The house is in Montmartre, the Bohemian enclave that lured Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh and many other artists. The neighborhood figures in Renoir's 1876 masterpiece "Le Moulin de la Galette," as well as the work of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
The four-floor, 3,200-square-foot stone house has four bedrooms and a concierge's apartment. There's a front garden and a 1,200-square-foot interior garden. The current owner's family has held the property for about half a century and hasn't renovated the interior, says listing agent Xavier Attal, of Immobest International in association with Quintessentially Estates and Prestige Properties.
Jean Renoir, who directed "Grand Illusion," wrote extensively about the Château in a memoir of his father, who died in 1919 at 78, calling it an "odd conglomeration" of buildings "perched high above the Paris mist" whose hedge let its inhabitants live "in a world apart.""
www.luxist.com also has an article about the house and includes photos.
6 comments:
That's very cool, Hazel. I don't all that often wish I had buckets of money, but right at this moment I do. !!
I studied "The Grand Illusion" in film studies at U of T. (It was a survey course, so it was only one of a great number of films.) To be honest, I only remember a chess game. It didn't make much of an "impression".
Kat
WoW! I love this!!!
Such a place could no doubt inspire any budding artist ... or reinspire an established one. The interior must be fascinating.
Ah. Know where this is...I just realized after finally reading all the way down about Jean's memoir. This is all lost in the mists of a world apart (of my own), but it does ring many bells. Welcome ones.
Love "Grand Illusion." Love it. When I get 5 minutes...I'll ask the Netflix Fairy to put in queue.
ciao, Mme Pup
I just discovered your blog - I've been reading Jean Renoir's memoir, the description of the Chateau when he lived there! It's a lovely book. I walked right past the Chateau last summer, not knowing its history - through the place Dalida and past Allée des Brouillards. Thanks for mentioning the connection with Renoir, I'm surprised that it's not mentioned more often!
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