August, 2019 - Of Art and Wine

Monet’s Lily Pond and the Last of the Summer Wine

**Water Lily Pond – Green Harmonies by Claude Monet, 1899.**

Ah, summer! Its days are long, warm, often lazy, and always a welcome respite from the sharp chill of autumn and the bite of winter. It was in fact a hot day in August when I first saw the gardens of Monet’s home in Giverny. Claude Monet (1840-1926), the most commonly recognized member of the Impressionists (my apologies to Renoir, Degas, Pissarro, and the many others), lived on his property in Giverny for some 40 years, during which time he transformed the place into what looks like a personal paradise. It came, of course, with a lot of struggle, as the local community was none too fond of his rerouting the Epte river in order to make his famous lily ponds. When he built the large almost hangar-like studio in which he painted the huge panels of water lilies, he was even criticized for creating too modern a structure.

Still he persisted, through the many changes in his personal life (deaths of his first wife Camille and then after some years, his second wife, Alice), and even throughout World War I, when he could hear the canons of the battlefield from the confines of his gardens. The results are some 250 paintings and the 8 murals that now hang in the Orangerie in Paris, a gift, with his hopes for peace, to the nation of France upon the end of the war in 1918. However, it is more than an overwhelming contribution of beauty, it is also a master landscape painter saying, in the words of author Stephane Lambert, goodbye to the landscape.

Controversy has always followed these paintings since the turn of the 20th century ushered in Cubism and Abstraction. The whole project was sneered at for a long time by critics who thought the works were the result of the artistic stumbling of a half-blind old man past his prime. Monet, himself, would not allow the paintings to be shown until after his death, as no artist wants his greatest life work to be snickered at. I feel that was not because he doubted himself in any way, but because he knew that where he had gone in these paintings was beyond what people in his day would understand. However, with time the genius of them would be understood, and they would be seen as more than just pretty pictures. That had to do with the way he decentralized the landscape, taking away the familiar boundaries and making no one part more important than any other.

I first came across this concept of decentralization and Monet’s changing the ideas about what landscape is in a small, poetic little book by Belgian professor, Stephane Lambert, L’Adieu au paysage, les nymphéas de Claude Monet (Goodbye to Landscape, the Water Lilies of Claude Monet). Naturally, exploring these concepts leads to wonderful discoveries, as seen in the two paintings presented above. I must mention that the paintings chosen here are from before the severe cataract problem affected his eyesight in the period between 1912-1926. That eliminates the doddering, old, blind man theory as to why he painted these as he did.

In the first painting, Water Lily Pond – Green Harmonies (1899), we still see some of the familiar landmarks of painted scenes of landscape. The Japanese bridge is an important part of the composition, and catches the eye because it is a man-made item (though Monet’s garden is too – with nature’s help). It also serves as a way to help distinguish foreground from background, both of which are classical aspects of landscape. Yet there is a quality of the indistinct about the painting as everything is touched by green, be it yellow-green, leaf green, blue-violet green, or dark blackish green; almost all is green. The tonality of the greens creates the harmony in the painting, allowing us to distinguish certain things, the willows, the shrubs, the floating lily pads, without allowing a protracted gaze on any one thing other than the bridge. The bits of yellow-green in the trees and shrubs come forward as reflections of same in the open spaces of water between the floating groups of lilies. This adds to the harmony by uniting the area behind the bridge with that which is in front of it. The pinkish white lilies are counterpoints to these greens, making a subtle but necessary distinction in this accumulation of one color. The light that flows through the painting from the big willow through the waters of the pond, almost make this an earthly representation of the Milky Way, with the groups of floating lilies looking a bit like constellations.

**Water Lily Pond by Claude Monet, 1904** Click picture to magnify.

Water Lily Pond (1904), the second painting chosen (above), has even more of this feel of things floating in space. One feels the depth in this watery space, with its darkness flowing like a curved channel through the painting. Oddly on the upper right there is a group of lilies that seem a bit higher than the others, as though they were bushes on the bank of the pond, except there is no visible bank. That landmark has been removed. We do still see some hint of trees dashed across the upper part of the painting, sufficing for background, but only just.

Water Lilly Pond by Claude Monet, 1907. Click picture to magnify.

Finally, we have another iteration of this theme and here in Water Lily Pond 1907, (above) Monet’s only reference to the banks of the pond are the reflections of the trees. The big groups of lilies in their little constellations float in a space that is not as clearly water as what we see in the “foreground.” However, the shift between these two groups of lilies is a bit unreal and ethereal. Monet is removing the normal points of reference and putting the viewer into the atmosphere itself, floating somewhere in abstraction.

In fact it was the arrival of Abstract Expressionism that brought Monet back into favor, as finally it was seen what he was really working on. When one views an abstract work like a painting by Mark Rothko, it draws your consciousness into the painting as if there were no boundaries between you and the painting. And whose paintings began to move the viewer into the atmosphere of the painting by removing the normal known boundaries of landscape? Monet. His gigantic murals in those lovely, now daylight lit rooms in the Orangerie, were designed to totally immerse the viewer into the atmosphere of that floating world.

While it is wonderful to talk of Monet, it is even better to experience his work. Here you will find a video of the murals in the Orangerie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMCe07JSxl4. Monet was a great collector of Japanese prints, so it seems fitting that in Japan, there is a wonderful tribute to Monet in the form of a Monet water lily pond https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69ks5akyFsA

Monet’s paintings provide a lot to enjoy and a lot to think about, including how best to enjoy a lovely late summer afternoon in a beautiful garden. I have a few suggestions below.

Monet’s paintings are in Public Domain.

Marjorie Vernelle is an artist, writer, college professor, and traveler. For more see the Pages at ofartandwine.com or her author page at amazon.com and her art at Vernelle Art Boutique vernellestudio.com.

The Last of the Summer Wine

**Yes, ice. Yes, fruit. Yes, it’s summer and the last holiday weekend, so as they say in France on such occasions,”tout est permis!”**

Well, I don’t want to encourage unbridled hedonism by saying “everything” is permitted, rather I just wish to convey the idea that not all the normal rules apply when enjoying wine in the summer. One such rule is not having white wine with meat. In winter, the rich quality of a good red and a meat dish satisfy our need for what is heavy and hearty. But it’s summer and it’s hot. That is when the light finish of a glass of Riesling is both refreshing and a good way to cleanse the palate. However, it seems that the all around favorite for summer is Sauvignon Blanc. It’s medium body makes it work well with just about any food. In that same category one also finds Pinot Grigio, which is quite refreshing, as it has a zesty quality provided by hints of lemon, lime, honeysuckle and green apple. Of course, one need not give up reds just because the weather is warm. A fat juicy burger tastes wonderful with a Grenache, because it is lacking in the harsh tannins of many other red wines.

Mixology

Summer also seems to be a time of great creativity, as we see here in a Xterry Kalimotxo (Cherry Calimocho). This one has been a favorite in the Basque region of Spain since the ’50s. Basically it is 6 oz of Coca Cola and 6 oz of Rioja or Temperanillo wine. However, for this particular mix, Cherry Coke Zero adds that special something.

For more on the Xherry Kalimotxo, there is a great article in Bloomberg called, ” 12 Cocktails of Summer” www.bloomberg.com

That is only the beginning of the mixes one can make. The classiest, of course, is the Mimosa. Made of orange juice and champagne, in my book it is never wrong, as it is light, nutritious (orange juice) and always celebratory. After all, aren’t we all glad to be alive? Drink up! However, champagne is not the only wine for mixing, as wine spritzers, made simply with your favorite wine and club soda, are also lovely summer cocktails. Probably some of the most common mixes involve punches. Those can be sangria with diced fresh fruit added or perhaps a strawberry wine punch. For that, use one bottle of Moscato, a thawed 10 oz can of Bacardi Daiquiri Mix, 1/2 liter lemon-lime soda, and garnish with chilled fresh strawberries.

These lovelies are Peach Moscato Wine Slushies, which I discovered on the Divas Can Cook website, which introduces viewers to Southern Cooking for the Modern Woman. All I can do is turn ya’ll over to Monique www.divas can cook.com

When looking for wines for all of these possibilities, do take a look at the types of wines offered at www.cellarswineclub.com. They have great selections and programs for every level of taste and budget. It is a great way to explore wine and have fun doing it.

What’s Old Is New Again!

Yes, they’re back. Wine coolers are back, maybe along with wide shoulder pads and big hair. At any rate, the brief history of wine coolers, which were all the rage in the ’80s, goes like this. They were rather like alcoholic soda pop, containing fruit flavors, fairly high ABV (alcohol by volume), and produced by such well-known companies as Seagrams. Of course once the ’90s arrived, the party was over mostly because of a major increase in tax on wine and ultimately beer, as cooler manufacturers switched to malt coolers.

However, though they are back, they come in new and improved versions, with lower ABV and artisan components like mint and yerba mate. The coolers also come in chic looking cans now instead of bottles. They are made with better quality wine and are less sweet. Several of the popular ones are Ramona, which has the taste of sparkling sweetened grapefruit juice, Blood Orange Spritz by Pampelonne Sparkling Wine Cocktails, which is a twist on the classic Campari Spritz, and Portland Sangria, which has a touch of rosemary.

So settle in for the last holiday weekend of the summer, appreciate your family and friends, your garden, your flowers, and maybe even take a look at some of Monet’s wonderful paintings of his lily ponds at Giverny.

Images of Monet’s Water Lily Pond paintings are in Public Domain. The picture of the Xherry Kalimotxo is from Bloomberg.com and the Moscato Wine Slushies photo is from DivasCanCook.com

Of Art and Wine affiliates with Bluehost.com and CellarsWineClub.com and may earn from qualifying purchases.

©marjorie vernelle 2019

Coming Soon on Of Art and Wine Seduction and Vermeer’s The Glass of Wine

**Detail of The Glass of Wine by Johannes Vermeer, 1660.**

Perhaps this is just an erstwhile wine merchant trying to get the lady of the house to make a purchase. Perhaps. One thing that has been scientifically proven is that the aromas of wine can be a turn on for both men and women. So come to Of Art and Wine to find out which wines have the best amorous effects.

Botticelli on the Half Shell with Sancerre or Muscadet?

Well, we have all seen it. You know, it – Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. His Venus is on T-shirts, umbrellas, notebooks, pillows and tote bags. The painting itself is quite pretty, obviously highly decorative. Wouldn’t you just love it gracing a wall in one of the vast rooms in your country home? It seems that a member of a lesser branch of the Medici family wanted just that and for a specific reason that influenced how it was painted and whom he chose to be the painter. The Medici family was enormously wealthy in the 15th century and ruled Florence as merchant princes. However, even the rich cut corners from time-to-time, and so it was with the commission for this painting and its companion, Primavera.

La Primavera by Sandro Botticelli, c.1480. *Notice on the right the abduction of Chloris who is linked to* *Flora by a stem of leaves coming from her mouth, and the highly decorative pictorial space as* *befits a painting mimicking the style of a decorative tapestry. Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy.*

The rage was for tapestries, and especially for the tapestries of northern Europe. However, they were terribly expensive. What was one to do? This Medici (and it is not known exactly which one) decided to hire a painter to create beautiful scenes in large format (The Birth of Venus is 5’8” x 9’13”) to hang on the walls of Villa di Castello and take the place of one of those expensive tapestries. The perfect person to accomplish this was an artist well into his career, someone who had the Medici as a patron, and someone who had a feeling for the classical myths which had reemerged during the Renaissance. All that pointed to Sandro Botticelli.

Self Portrait of Sandro Botticelli from The Gift of the Magi, 1475-1476

Botticelli was known for his fine drawing skills and his beautiful female figures, most of whom had very similar faces (more on that later). The idea for the Birth of Venus was to paint a classical myth, featuring a nude woman (you could get away with that if dealing with the classics) and various attendants, all telling a story. In this painting there are actually two stories, and yes, gory as many Greek myths are, they have hopeful endings. Venus was born when Saturn castrated his father Uranus whose blood fell into the sea. However, from this hateful act, the goddess of love was born out of the churning sea foam. The charming couple on the left side of the painting are Zepherus, God of the West Wind and his companion, a nymph named Chloris. They look wonderful together, but it did not start that way. Zepherus, being a Greek god, naturally thought he could have any woman he wanted, so he forced himself on Chloris. He then fell in love with her and begged forgiveness, which she gave. That act elevated her to divinity, and she became Flora, the Goddess of Flowers and Spring. It is her incarnation as Flora that we see about to throw a flowered robe over the goddess. So we have blood, gore and bad behavior linked to the creation of goddesses. (It’s Greek to me.)

It is interesting to look at what Botticelli did with this commission. Since it would hang in a country villa, it had to be charming, eye-catching and refreshing, as well as decorative as befits one of those expensive tapestries. The main task was to create not a detailed painted replica of a tapestry but something with the decorative feel of a tapestry. It had to be large enough to cover wall space, yet still be a wall hanging not a mural. We are, because of the story, on the sea, and we see the pale green waters with very systematic, stylized white caps. Since this is a story that was to be told in tapestry, which does not have the fluidity of paint, the stylized treatment mimics the way that stories were woven in that other medium. The landscape behind the painting is minimal, again with a simplified design easily achieved in a woven picture, and not with much attention to depth of perspective. A stand of laurel trees on the right makes reference to Lorenzo de Medici (1449-1492), the magnificent patron of the arts and great patron to Botticelli. So we can say Botticelli was a good diplomat as well as a great artist.

The figures in the Birth of Venus seem almost pasted onto the front of the painting rather than integrated in any way with the background. While there is some indication of depth (the distant horizon and the land weaving in and out), frontality is a key element, as is a romanticized beauty. This we see again in Primavera, where the figures are all lined up in the foreground with a heavy stand of fruit trees just behind them. The small space of ground they stand on is almost like a stage, though the ground is painted with strewn flowers, a decorative element that one might see in a tapestry. Though Botticelli’s two paintings are quite elaborate in some ways, they could seem like detailed cartoons for the creation of tapestries. In the Birth of Venus, the figures almost dance, as Zepherus is blowing the waves and Chloris’ flowers, while Venus rides in on her scallop shell, and Flora waves the robe like a flag for the arrival of spring. You can almost hear the trumpets sound. Yet who is the image of this Venus, so pure, so innocent, covering herself modestly with her hair and standing a bit shyly off balance?

Portrait of Simonetta Vespucci as a Nymph by Sandro Botticelli, 1480. Click to magnify.

Well here she is, the face that launched tens of paintings by Botticelli (and others), Simonetta Vespucci, the official “Queen of Beauty,” an honor bestowed upon her by the people of Florence after Giuliano de Medici won a jousting tournament carrying a banner with her image as Pallas Athena, painted by Botticelli, of course. I say, of course, because of all the men who were after Simonetta (who had married into the wealthy Vespucci family when she was 15), Botticelli lived on the same street where she lived, so must have seen her often. When you look at his paintings, whether at a Greek goddess or the Virgin Mary, you see some version of Simonetta. Simonetta’s reign was short, as she died suddenly at the age of 22 in 1476, sending the whole of Florence into shock and grief. For Botticelli, was she just his muse, like Petrarch’s Laura, or was she more than that? Final interesting fact, Simonetta is buried in the Franciscan church Chiesa di Ognissanti, and Botticelli is buried at her feet.

The Birth of Venus is one of the classic beauties of the Renaissance and perhaps modeled on one of the classic beauties of Renaissance Florence. Its fresh seaside environment with a light wind blowing from Zepherus, himself, certainly can lead the mind to think of seafood delicacies and what good thing to drink along with them.

Paintings used here are in Public Domain.

What to Drink with Seafood, Sancerre or Muscadet?

The village and the fields of Sancerre in the eastern reaches of the Loire Valley in France.

This is Sancerre, the town and the vineyards, located on the left bank of the Loire River in the eastern part of the Loire Valley. On the opposite bank, one finds the region famous for Pouilly Fumé and Vouvray, but Sancerre is the home of the eponymous white wine made exclusively from Sauvignon Blanc grapes. Sancerre, the wine, has been described as having a lively acidity, and a flinty citrus-tinged taste, sometimes even a smoked flavor. This unique combination of taste attributes seems a good reflection of the town where the wine was born.

Sancerre, the village, seems bucolic enough, but in fact has a long contrarian history, especially involving resistance movements. During the Wars of Religion in the 1500s, the Huguenots took refuge there. In the French Revolution, those who wanted to restore the monarchy fled to Sancerre. In World War II, it was a command center for the Resistance, so that acidic, flinty, citrus quality seems to be the nature of the place in all things.

When it comes to food, Sancerre goes with most things, from roast chicken or turkey to pork chops to grilled fish like salmon, bass, and trout. It doesn’t seem to have met a vegetable it didn’t like, but goes especially well with asparagus. Fresh goat cheese works nicely, especially little buttons of Crottin de Chavignol or one of my personal favorites, Valençay, which is goat cheese with a smoked outer crust sculpted in the shape of a four-sided tower. For those who love their meats, Sancerre also produces reds and rosés, those exclusively from Pinot Noir grapes. So Sancerre covers the waterfront. Oh, speaking of waterfronts and thereby the sea, many Americans always choose Sancerre to go with seafood, especially oysters. Not a bad choice, but there is a better one.

The Saga of the Melon de Bourgogne Grape

As with many things in France, it all goes back to the Middle Ages. That was when the melon de Bourgogne grape was banished from its original home in eastern France, only to take up residence near the Atlantic close to the city of Nantes. Here its almost salty taste found its way into the recipe for beurre blanc sauce, and its lemon lime fruity notes along with its sea-like saline quality paired it well with the region’s seafood, especially oysters, shrimp, and mussels.

Up until the last twenty years or so, the wine made from the melon de Bourgogne grape, Muscadet, was not much regarded, though I would say those seafood wise old Mediterraneans knew about it and revered its flavor when combined with fruit de mer. It was in Nice more than 20 years ago now, at the Café de Turin, a simple but locally famous seafood place near the Place Garibaldi, where I, hearing what the locals were ordering, followed suit and got my first taste of Muscadet. It was light, light, light, so crisp and so refreshing, this because of its extreme dryness. No better choice for a platter of fruit de mer, especially the oysters, it literally took me on a seafood sea cruise. I actually tried speaking Nizzard, the local dialect of Nice, after an afternoon of seafood and Muscadet.

The Muscadet appellation comes from a region south of Nantes. Technically it is in the Loire region, but geologically its granite underpinnings make it more a part of Brittany than the limestone-based Loire Valley. There are three main Muscadet producing areas: Sevre et Maine, Côteaux de La Loire, and Côtes de Grandlieu. These regions have grown quite studious in developing their growing techniques and treatment of the soil, which has caused Muscadet to rise in public opinion. It is to the point now where people are taking tours looking for gastronomic adventures featuring Muscadet. Here’s one of these adventures in France on mussels and Muscadet, https://foodwineclick.com/2016/03/18/thai-red-curry-mussels-paired-with-muscadet-sevre-et-maine/ And should you really be adventurous, there is Ray Isle’s trip through the American South in “The Awesome Pairing Power of Muscadet.” He pairs it with everything from barbeque to tacos: https://www.foodandwine.com/articles/the-awesome-pairing-power-of-muscadet

So Sancerre or Muscadet, you really can’t go wrong. You can stick with an old standby, Sancerre, or go adventuring with Muscadet. I must mention that the melon de Bourgogne grape is also grown on our Pacific Coast, so check out Cellars Wine Club for both West Coast Wines and International Wines: www.cellarswineclub.com Hmmm, those Thai red curry mussels sound good.

Of Art and Wine affiliates with Bluehost.com and CellarsWineClub.com and may earn from qualifying purchases.

©marjorie vernelle 2019

Coming Soon on Of Art and Wine: Monet’s Lily Pond and the Last of the Summer Wine

Water Lilly Pond – Green Harmonies by Claude Monet, 1899.

Have you ever seen so many greens? How did Monet create this green harmony? And equally important, what summer wine cooler might you drink while viewing these spectacular shades of green?

Straight Out of Provence: Cezanne and Rosé Wine

**Basket of Apples by Paul Cezanne, 1893. Art Institute of Chicago.** Click picture to magnify.

The painting above was shown in 1895 in Paris in the gallery of Ambroise Vollard and was the first work that Cezanne had shown in almost 20 years. Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) has the distinction of being both an Impressionist and a Post-Impressionist, and how that came to be has a lot to do with why he did not show his art in Paris for 20 years. As with many of the artists who were in the Impressionist movement, Cezanne struggled with his family to become a painter. He actually had to study law while taking courses at the local Beaux Arts in Aix-en-Provence. When in 1861 he was finally able to get support for what he most wanted to do, paint, off to Paris he went. Rejected consistently by the Paris Salon but also by the Salon des Refusés (1864-1869), which is where the Impressionists earned their name, he returned to his beloved Provence. However, during his time in Paris, he developed a friendship with painter Camille Pissarro, who was almost a father figure to Cezanne, as opposed to Cezanne’s own banker father. When Cezanne fled Paris during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) and returned to the south of France, it was what he had learned from Pissarro (mostly determination) that stayed with him and influenced his views on his painting. In his long sojourn away from Paris, really the rest of his life after 1878, he moved from what could be defined as Impressionism, to what became an extension of the idea that bridged its way to early 20th century Cubism.

While Cezanne is well-known for his landscapes, including his many paintings of Mont Sainte Victoire, he is also known for still life paintings and for an important series of paintings, five altogether, known as The Card Players (1893-1896). One of the most interesting aspects of that series is how the paintings of two or three men playing cards become what some have called, “human still life.” It is worth taking a few moments to compare the painting of the fruit and the painting of the men playing cards to look at what Cezanne added to the vocabulary of painting in his time.

Les Joueurs de cartes (The Card Players) by Paul Cezanne, 1894-1895. One in a series of five at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

The first thing to notice about the two men playing cards is how intent they are on what they are doing. Now most paintings of card players, such as the ones done by the Dutch in the 17th century (especially anything by Jan Steen) are full of activity. Caravaggio’s famous The Cardsharps (1594) shows active cheating, one player with a winning card tucked behind his back while his partner spies on the hand of a vulnerable young man. Here there is none of that. The two men, one a gardener on Cezanne’s father’s estate (known as Père Alexandre, on the left) and a farm worker, Paulin Paulet (on the right), concentrate on their hands. Oddly there is no money seen on the table, nor are there wine glasses though there is a bottle of wine present. Those items would indicate action, and Cezanne cuts the action in this scene to a minimum. One would think that it would take a very long time for these two to play this hand.

In looking at the two paintings and thinking of the soft, lovely works of the Impressionists, one notices right away that Cezanne has hard edges. In The Basket of Apples, the handling of the white table cloth upon which the apples sit has a sharp angularity. The apples might fool one on first glance as some of them seem nothing more than red-orange balls. The basket holding some of the apples is tilted forward, though one sees no signs of what supports its upright position. The white plate holds what might be small loaves of bread, all rather indistinct in their forms. Yet, this adds more of the yellow color that plays off the yellow in the apples. One sees little block like stokes of color, very much like what one sees in Cezanne’s landscapes. There is a splat of orange-ish brown on the left hand side of the table, matched by another across the middle of the bottle of wine. The table cloth and the back wall both have little strokes of blue which unite the foreground and the background. Now while Cezanne felt that art ran parallel to nature, we definitely get the idea that Cezanne’s nature was somewhat abstracted and hard-edged, not unlike other post-impressionists, such as Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin.

In looking at The Card Players, the block like strokes of color mold the bodies of the two players, with the purples and dark greens around the edges of the sleeves and the jackets contrasting with the lighter splashes of color in the middle of the arms and the bodies, working to give a rounded feeling. One can tell there is an age difference between the men, with the younger man seeming larger and more robust than Père Alexandre. Their hats have character, as do their long jackets, but they seem perfectly comfortable in each other’s company. Their game of cards is a portrait not so much of the two men but of an element that symbolizes the timeless culture of Provence, where things move more slowly and where Cezanne, someone who suffered from depression and moodiness, knew tranquility.

Cezanne joins the elements of the painting of this card game together with his color harmonies of violets and lavender opposed by oranges and pale greens. We see them in the clothing, on the table cloth and in the smattering of paint on the back wall of the café. This is similar to what he does in The Basket of Apples, where the oranges, reds, and yellows of the fruit contrast with the cool blues and whites of the table cloth and the white dish holding the bread. They are real and recognizable but anything but photographic or naturalistic. His choppy strokes of color and the angularity in the posing of the arms and bodies of these figures, or the sharp folds in the white table cloth in The Basket of Apples, have the hallmarks of the Cubism that was to come. While Cubism is associated with Pablo Picasso, Picasso said that Cezanne was “the father of us all,” meaning all the early 20th century cubists. He referred to Cezanne as his “one and only master.”

So Paul Cezanne, who left Paris to return to his roots in the South of France and worked for years in his studio in Aix-en-Provence, not bothering to show work at all, is the father of all of those modern painters who came after. He is not only a great painter but an inspiration to all those who simply have to follow their own path, their wonders to reveal. Here you see one of his many self-portraits. What a beautiful curmudgeon.

Cezanne’s painting are in Public Domain.

Rosé, the Wine of Provence.

**Add some summer chill to your life with a glass or two of cool (50-60 degrees) rosé**

You see it in the two paintings above, like a silent symbol of the land, a cultural icon. Yes, it’s the bottle of wine. While the bottles present in Cezanne’s paintings are quite dark, perhaps they even contain red wine (and there are fine reds produced in Provence), one likes to think that a proud Provençal like Cezanne would have them hold some rosé. First thing to get straight is that rosé is not just red wine and white wine mixed together, with the exception of some pink champagnes. In fact rosé wines in France have an appellation that forbids the blending of wines, though different kinds of grapes, including some whites, can be mixed together on their way to becoming wine. Rosé was once simply the wine of Provence, refreshingly light to drink in summer, and not much paid attention to. Then White Zinfandel became popular and according to some has mistakenly been considered a blush wine when it is actually made in the same way as rosé. In recent years rosé in all its forms has grown in prominence. In fact, it now outsells white wines in France. So what is this wine called rosé?

Rosé is a way of life in Provence. It’s made from Grenache, Cinsault or Mourvedre grapes to produce a light, crisp, dry taste that goes well with vegetables, seafood and meat. The process requires that the crushed grapes sit for 2-3 days with the skins still present during a process called maceration. During those days, through the process called saignée, the color of the grape skins bleeds into the wine to create those varying levels of pink. While Provence is the most famous producer of rosés, the Italians produce a variety of rosatos including the cherry pink Cerasuolo d’Abruzzo. Spain produces rosados in Navarra and Rioja. Of course, rosé is also produced in the wine growing regions here in the U.S.A. and include such delicately colored lovelies as Sebastiani Vineyards, Eye of the Swan.

Four Types of Wine: White, Rosé, Tavel, and Red

No kidding. Tavel is a town whose name is a rosé appellation. Tavel is rosé and everything in Tavel is “la vie en rose” by law. Tavel has a deep reddish pink color that sometimes has the orange tones of the sunset. The grapes used are Grenache, Syrah and Cinsault but often mixed with white grapes (not wine, just grapes) to lighten the color and give a flowery tone.

Oh, you make me blush!

The term blush wines, mentioned above, would seem to indicate a different process used in the creation of the wine. However, so-called blush wines are mostly made in the same fashion as rosé, as previously explained. In the U.S.A. they often bear the names White Zinfandel, White Grenache, and White Merlot and tend to be sweeter in taste than many of the classic Provençal rosés. There are those who draw fine distinctions between rosé and blush wines. One process for making blush wines is to create Vin Gris (gray wine), which takes black grapes, lightly presses them after harvest and ferments the juice without the skins. The result is a dry though slightly sweet wine that is pale pink in color. For more on blush versus rosé and the rise of White Zinfandel, take a look at this article by Keith Beavers for VinePair.com https://vinepair.com/wine-geekly/your-guide-to-blush-wine-which-isnt-rose-but-kind-of-is/

In terms of selecting the rosé wine that best suits your taste preferences, I am turning you over to an expert, Jackie Blisson , whose video is linked here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5NZAV86rrk For a never-ending list of food pairings (and believe me rosé goes with everything), Fiona Beckett’s Matching Food and Wine has really great suggestions for every type of rosé, https://www.matchingfoodandwine.com/news/pairings/the-best-food-pairings-for-ros/

Provence with its wine-growing areas on both banks of the Rhone River has led the way in terms of the rosé revolution. It is becoming a wine for any occasion and all seasons, and the subject of literature. Elizabeth Gabay MW has written a book on the subject called Rosé: Understanding the Pink Wine Revolution. If this is whetting your appetite for some quality rosé, you can try any number of different kinds through a wine club like Cellars Wine Club, which has a wide selection, a plan to suit every budget and level of expertise, and a “No bad bottle” return policy. www.cellarswineclub.com

So just think of Cezanne as you look at The Card Players, The Basket of Apples or his Mont Sainte Victoire, sip a glass of your favorite rosé, perhaps a Tavel, and take a mental journey off to Provence. You’ll be glad you did.

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Coming soon: Botticelli on the Half-Shell, with Sancerre or Muscadet?

The **Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli, mid-1480s. Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy.**

The painting is iconic, no question about that. But what goes better with seafood, Sancerre or Muscadet? Well, that is the question. Make sure to come explore the option, next on Of Art and Wine.