The pleasures of emptiness

There’s something about staying with family when you go travelling - a mix of anecdote, nostalgia, questions, laughs, watchfulness, diplomacy… quite unlike any other kind of travel. I’m staying with my sister and her husband in their old farmhouse in the Tarn et Garonne, in a landscape of beguiling hills and valleys, quiet villages and farms, and an emptiness which we scarcely find in England these days, maybe parts of north Norfolk.

One of my purposes was to try to get a good painting of the little road which rises up on the other side of the small valley here. I have tried painting and drawing it many times before. I don’t know why it’s so intriguing, but it’s typical of the way the country roads go around here - with gentle bends, rising up between mixed small fields to a wooded crest, and several old farmsteads within sight. The land was rich enough to support families in close proximity, which is unlike north or west Norfolk in that respect.  Here's a preparatory sketch I did yesterday morning.

Yesterday, which was brilliantly hot and sunny, we went out after lunch to look at a small castle at Gramont and drove through this magic landscape of valleys, woodlands and twists, with the bright stone villages (such as Marsac) perched on their hilltops, and the fields of sunflowers on either side, slowing darkening to ripeness. The castle really has two parts - a medieval or Gothic phase with a tower named for Simon de Montfort, and a Renaissance wing behind it, with fabulous Italianate doors and window mouldings.  The older part is tall - with one vast room on top of another, one huge upstairs floor made of local river pebbles (recently, perhaps), and the roof of the highest room constructed almost like a Kentish barn with king posts and visible beams.   The ‘newer’ part, made in the 16th century, is more palatial with these fantastic stone surrounds for the doors and windows, complete with putti, coat of arms, pilasters, swags, and classical ornaments. 

     

The whole thing was taken on by a rich couple called Marcelle and Roger Dichamp in 1961and repaired and restored and furnished, before being handed over to the nation.  A young woman is employed to sell tickets and do the tours. She was intensely serious about her tour, wouldn’t look any of us in the face, and spoke very fast with no concessions to anyone not familiar with the Langue d’Oc. But she pointed everything out to us, explained the tapestries and the forensic evidence showing the architectural history (mainly one lost long side corridor which once linked the rooms in the Renaissance part).   The castle is highly polished, with lovely windows and interesting bits of clunky furniture, but it is mostly empty. 

The funniest thing was the vast collection of paintings adorning all the rooms in the building.  These paintings are in the collection of the artist, one Pontencin or some such name, a Belgian, who liked to paint portraits of people with dogs’ heads, and giving each painting a cute title… ‘Father and Daughter’, ‘The Aristocrat’, etc.  These are truly ghastly, known as anthropomorphic art, a style which (worryingly) is becoming more popular as you will see if you google it.  I could only bring myself to photograph one of them, in this instance, a monkey head.

I imagine the artist (or his family) and the castle management team are all well-pleased with this arrangement. But, for me, the pictures make the visit memorable for entirely the wrong reasons. 

Coming back to the house, it was wonderful to have a swim in the little pool, watch the sun go down, and enjoy the silence.