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OT-Rueil-4566

La Capitainerie
Les bords de Seine  
Boulevard Bellerive  
92500 RUEIL-MALMAISON (Hauts-de-Seine)
Tél 01 47 16 72 66 - Fax 01 47 49 46 68

There are different facettes to Rueil-Malmaison, one of these takes us back to the Impressionists through the banks of the Seine. Guy de Maupassant wrote to his mother “Here I swim and canod alternatively; the rats and frogs are so used to see me going by with the light on my canoo’s prow that they come did wish me “Good Evening”. On the opposite bank to Rueil, on the Impressionist’s Island at Chatou, stands the Maison Fournaise, a famous restaurant where the Impressionists and canooers used to gather during the second half of the 19th century. The image of this has been immortalised in Renoir’s painting, world wide famous, the joyful “Déjeuner des Canotiers” in 1881.
It is at the same period that the Seine banks are the most lively, the 11 o’clock train used to arrive at Rueil with its Parisian passengers in light summer dress, for Sunday boating and lunch in
the riverside Guinguettes (popular café-restaurant). This is precisely the place where Impressionists such as Monet, Renoir, Turner, Corot, Sisley and Morisot did in fact paint many and even some of their greatest works and is this considered as being important culturally speaking for this movement.
At Croisy-sur Seine, still on the same bank, the musée de La Grenouillère, a flash back to the 19th century and the Café de La Grenouillére ( “Frog Raft” ) renowned for cold baths, Thursday ball and its “happy hours” for canooers and boaters. This place was a source of inspiration to Guy de Maupassant among other important literary and artistic personalities.

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