People at a cafe in central Le Havre, France, which has hundreds of blocks of apartment buildings, a rectangular grid system of streets, and wide sidewalks and boulevards, April 21, 2024. This often-overlooked city, France’s largest seaport, has a museum full of Impressionist canvases, intriguing architecture and a new energy. Photo / The New York Times
People at a cafe in central Le Havre, France, which has hundreds of blocks of apartment buildings, a rectangular grid system of streets, and wide sidewalks and boulevards, April 21, 2024. This often-overlooked city, France’s largest seaport, has a museum full of Impressionist canvases, intriguing architecture and a new energy. Photo / The New York Times
Welcome to the French city of Le Havre, birthplace of Monet and impressionism, writes Elaine Sciolino
As the fog of dawn lifted one morning in mid-November 1872, Claude Monet looked out of the window of his hotel room in the French city of Le Havre andfuriously painted his vision of its industrial harbour. He flung his brush with quick strokes and played with the water, stretching it with rays of colour.
In one sitting, he created Impression, Sunrise, a painting of a vivid orange sun with its reflection shimmering in the sea.
In 1874, Monet, who grew up in Le Havre, on the Normandy coast, included the painting in an exhibition of 30 artists’ work organised in response to the Paris Salon, an annual showcase of academic art. Critic Louis Leroy denounced “The Exhibition of the Impressionists” and mocked the title of Monet’s painting. “An impression, I’m sure,” he wrote. “I thought to myself, this has made an impression on me so there must be impressions somewhere in there.”
This year, France is celebrating the 150th anniversary of the movement. In Paris, the Musee d’Orsay is exhibiting 130 works from and related to the 1874 exhibition and offering a one-hour immersive tour with virtual reality headsets. It is sending 178 other works to more than 30 museums throughout France.
The Musee Marmottan, which owns Impression, Sunrise, has agreed to lend it to the Orsay until July for its exhibition Paris 1874: Inventing Impressionism and to the National Gallery in Washington, where the exhibition travels in September.
But to discover a fresh and unexpected view of impressionism requires a visit to Le Havre, France’s most important seaport and its most underappreciated big city.
Snubbed by tourists
Once there was a direct New York-to-Le Havre route on the French Line, whose luxury cruise liners pampered rich Americans with fancy suites and fine French cuisine. Le Havre was their first point of entry into the Old World.
But in more recent times, cruises and tour operators preferred to take their passengers to the Normandy beaches and to charming, quaint Honfleur on the other side of the Seine estuary, rather than to gritty Le Havre. Even today, many Parisians have never visited.
With its white walls, steel frame and floor-to-ceiling glass facade that gives a view out to the sea, the museum allows visitors to revel in the light — luminous and sombre — produced by the fickle weather of Normandy. A second-floor balcony that looks out over the museum’s outdoor esplanade and the sea adds to the feeling of openness.
“There was a desire from the beginning to make the museum open to the great spectacle of the changing elements outside,” said Géraldine Lefebvre, the museum’s director.
MuMa, as it is called, has arguably the most important collection of impressionist paintings in France outside the Musee d’Orsay. (Rouen’s Musee des Beaux-Arts makes the same claim.) MuMa’s collection is also home to some of the world’s most famous paintings from the fauvist movement that followed. And unlike the gridlocked Orsay, MuMa is always gloriously under-visited.
A woman visits the Musee d’Art Moderne Andre Malraux, known as MuMa, which features a collection of Impressionist paintings, in Le Havre, France, April 21, 2024. Photo / The New York Times
Rebuilt after World War II
Le Havre is not an ancient city like Paris. When King Francois I created the port of Le Havre in 1517, the priority was to create “un havre” — a harbour — that would serve as both a military site to protect France from invaders and a commercial port to open Paris to the world. The city was an afterthought.
Trade exploded over time. Wealthy merchants built grand homes in the coastal town of Sainte-Adresse, northwest of Le Havre.
In August 1944, Britain’s Royal Air Force rained bombs on the city and its inhabitants; 2000 civilians were killed, 80,000 were left homeless and more than 80 per cent of the city was destroyed.
In the 1950s, French architect Auguste Perret, working with a tight budget and on a deadline, oversaw Le Havre’s reconstruction. A master of precast concrete, he used the cheap, plentiful material to build 150 residential blocks with identical modular frames, a rectangular grid system of streets, and wide sidewalks and boulevards. All the apartments had central heating and modern appliances.
The buildings were once considered ugly. At first glance, they all look alike; then you discover that the concrete came in different shades — creamy beige, grey, taupe, khaki, terra cotta, ochre — and that the geometric columns and beams were finished with varying patterns and textures (from mottled stone to a smooth velvety feel).
“My concrete is more beautiful than stone,” Perret said. “I work it, I chisel it.”
A woman visits the Musee d’Art Moderne Andre Malraux, known as MuMa, which features a floor-to-ceiling glass facade that allows visitors to revel in the light, and the art, in Le Havre, France, April 21, 2024. Photo / The New York Times
A transformed city centre
Le Havre has undergone an architectural transformation in recent years. In the centre of town is Le Volcan, a partly underground complex designed by Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer. It consists of a volcano-shaped theater and a smaller crater converted into a library — with quirky seating pods that are great for kids. On the waterfront is Les Bains des Docks, a swimming complex and spa with pools, hammams, Jacuzzis and solariums designed by French architect Jean Nouvel; inspired by ancient Roman baths, it is covered in 32 million tiny mosaic tiles. Nearby is the Docks Vauban, a mall with a cinema, restaurants and high-end boutiques.
There is one place in Le Havre that captures the city in time. The Maison de l’Armateur, the mansion of a family of shipowners-merchants and now a museum, is one of the city’s only surviving buildings from the 18th century, with a facade sculpted in Louis XVI style.
Docks Vauban, a mall with a cinema, restaurants, and high-end boutiques, in Le Havre, France, April 22, 2024. Photo / The New York Times
A garden where Monet painted
In the summer of 1867, while visiting his aunt in Sainte-Adresse, Monet painted Garden at Sainte-Adresse, which now hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
“People know Sainte-Adresse because of the painting,” said Francois Rosset, a longtime resident who is president of its heritage association. “It’s a formidable vehicle for our town.”
Monet’s aunt’s house, which is privately owned, stays empty for much of the year. The main gate to the garden entrance was open on the day I visited. An employee on the grounds let me in for a peek at the site, with its red brick house with white shutters.
Hubert Dejan de la Batie, the mayor of Sainte-Adresse, has dreams of buying and renovating the house and transforming the area into a tourist attraction.
“Maybe I can’t do as well as Giverny,” he said in an interview, referring to the house where Monet lived for 43 years. “But Monet spent his childhood in Le Havre, and maybe we can do a second centre for Monet tourism here. We just have to make the project sexy.”
Children play near the port, where fishing boats, yachts and ferries are moored, in Le Havre, France, April 21, 2024. Photo / The New York Times
Checklist
LE HAVRE, FRANCE
GETTING THERE
Fly from Auckland to Paris with Emirates, Qatar Airways, Singapore Airlines, American Airlines and Air NZ (with Air France) with one stopover.
The train from Paris to Le Havre takes approximately 2 hours, 10 minutes. One-way tickets start from an average of 16 euros when booked in advance through SNCF Connect.
Elaine Sciolino is a contributing writer and former Paris bureau chief for The New York Times, and she is based in France since 2002. Her newest book, “Adventures in the Louvre: How to Fall in Love With the World’s Greatest Museum,” will be published in 2025. In 2010, she was decorated a chevalier of the Legion of Honor, the highest honour of the French state.
