Ranger's House Exhibition

Paris

Lessore lived in Paris in 1963 and 1964 and has made many visits since. In the 60s. he tended to paint landscapes from an old Ford van. It was, at that time, still relatively easy to park in Paris, and he did many street scenes on the spot. But there were other paintings, such as the views of the Salpétrière which were done from a window high up above the Boulevard de l’Hôpital or several of his sister-in-law’s flat in the Boulevard Masséna, near the Porte d’Italie, traditional point of departure for the Barbizon painters when leaving Paris for the forest of Fontainebleau and elsewhere. Lessore’s great-grandfather, the painter Emile Lessore, lived at Marlotte.

This area, the “Ile de France”, is considered to have the best light in northern France.

Kaymos

This is a house outside the village of Foucherolles where the artist has stayed regularly since 1971.

It is a traditional, stone and brick, single-storey farmhouse, in the flattish country south-east of Fontainebleau and a few miles north of Courtenay, a land of arable and dairy farms, oak woods, lakes and “miel du Gatinais”. Dotted about the plains, are villages of rough cream and honey-coloured stone, grey doors and shutters with red brick surrounds, and every loft has a gabled access in the front, often with a ladder permanently set up.

Inside, the walls are lime-washed and the floors are rendered with a waxy lime mortar, or tiled.

The people in the paintings are usually members of Lessore’s extended family.

Les Roches

Since 1970, the artist has stayed two or three times a year in this hamlet, close by Chézy-sur-Marne, (the etymology is the same as for cheese). Immaculate Champagne vineyards contrast with broad-leaved woods, steep-sided valleys, and clusters of brown-roofed cottages, the colour of the local “Brie”.

Beyond is the endless windswept plain.

Artists liked to come here in the past, but so, too, did invading armies, above all in the 1914-18 war, which is commemorated by massive military cemeteries and hills which still bear names such as “Côte 204”. And innumerable cellars carved into the rock slopes remind one of where the inhabitants sheltered during the bombardments.

Below the hamlet, the clear Dolloir in its pebble bed, in former times “le ru d’Olloir”, flows through Chézy and into the grey-green Marne.

Italy and Provence

In February 1962 Lessore went to Rome on a travelling scholarship and spent time in Florence, Arezzo, Urbino and various other places. Later that year, he lived in Villeneuve-lès-Avignon.

It has been difficult to trace the owners of many paintings from either of these two periods.

Carcassonne

Since 1960, Lessore has stayed annually in a house some miles from this spectacular, largest fortified city in Europe. A natural fortress dominating the valley of the Aude, it was occupied, and progressively strengthened, by Greeks, Romans, Visigoths and Arabs, culminating in the 13th century additions of St. Louis, whose reign saw the end of the Albigensian wars, and who, having exiled its population in reprisal for their support for the Cathars, laid out for them the rectilinear “ville basse” which soon became, and still is, the important part of the town.

Another remarkable local enterprise is the “Canal du Midi” built by Riquet in the 17th Century to link the Atlantic with the Mediterranean and in regular use by commercial barges until a few years ago. A series of artificial lakes was also constructed to feed it, the main one being that of St. Ferréol.

The Paris meridian runs through the west side of Carcassonne.