St. Paul de Vence and Vence

Tuesday, September 16

On Tuesday, we went to St. Paul de Vence and Vence. Not sure why their names are similar. They are close to each other but not on top of each other.

St. Paul was quite intriguing. Very touristy but we found the steep, narrow streets of the art galleries to be compelling. Not every store front was a gallery but almost 95% of them were. And much of it was very expensive original oil paintings, but there were some more affordable items. I met artist Silvia Bertini at work in her atelier, her hands covered in paint, and I bought one of her limited edition prints. Her work at first looked like collage, but it was perhaps more assemblage. She layered paint and other materials onto boards and canvas; she mentioned that she used marble dust mixed with her paint to achieve certain textures. I loved her use of color. If I’m successful in posting this photo I grabbed from the St. Paul de Vence website, then you can see!

Sample of Silvia's artwork >>>>>>>>>

We also took many photos of the narrow streets and I caught lots of doorways and windows.

We left St. Paul and drove to Vence. Jim was a little vague about what he wanted to see there; he mentioned the Chapel de Rosaire but until we got there, I didn’t make the connection that it was the chapel Matisse had designed – how terrific that we got to see his drawings for it in Nice and then saw the finished paintings of the stations of the cross, the Madonna and Child on the walls of the chapel itself. We stayed for a lecture by the docent – but it was completely in French, so I only understood about every 20th word. I can’t remember the French for “fall” (tombe, perhaps) but I could follow when the docent was talking about the stations where Christ fell the first time, the second time. Her voice was very soothing to listen to, even if I couldn’t understand most of what she was saying about Matisse and his paintings in the chapel.

We drove back to the resort and although we ate a simple dinner at the pool snack bar, Jim made his famous curried lentils and vegetables for the next day’s dinner.