Published: Saturday, Jul. 26, 2008 / Updated: Saturday, Jul. 26, 2008 11:49 PM

Local artists find inspiration in French countryside Group of 20 spends two weeks along Normandy coast studying and sketching

The mourning doves cooed as I opened the old shutters and gazed at the lipstick-red rose garden, the massive iron gates and the wheat field beyond. Gone was the frenzy of Paris, replaced by absolute stillness and daylight filtering through the fir trees.

Was this "Upstairs Downstairs" or perhaps Marie Antoinette's boudoir?

Ah yes, back to reality. Fitz and I were spending a week in an 18th-century French chateau in Normandy, close to the site where William the Conquerer launched his 1066 invasion of England, Claude Monet began his Impressionist style and thousands of American soldiers lost their lives in the D-Day invasions of World War II. A place of fiery history and natural beauty.

We were 20 Winthrop University art students, faculty and friends, dropped into the lush countryside of northwestern France to study how the masters did it, and have a go ourselves. We were a happy, compatible lot. Our expert teachers, Winthrop professors Seymour Simmons and Peg DeLamater, brought to life the drawing, painting and French art history that had swirled around Normandy for centuries.

The three-story chateau had thick stonewalls, the foundations of a 14th-century circular staircase and faint remains of the ox blood exterior. Called Chateau Rouge for that reason, its back garden was filled with small apple trees, evergreens, red and black currants and raspberries hugging the fence. Magnificent rose bushes sent their fragrance inside when the breakfast room doors were thrown open. Bees busily spread pollen throughout the garden. Our laundry drying on hedges became part of our own art exhibit!

"The back yard looked like an Impressionist painting," said Winthrop English professor Bill Naufftus, who tagged along with his wife, Ann, a student in the art course. "It was like "Le Dejeuner sur l'Herbe" with clothes on."

The two-week trip started with five days in Paris and ended with eight days in Meuvaines, the farm village of Chateau Rouge, walking distance to the ocean. Seymour, Peg and Seymour's French wife, Martine, planned the excursion, their third in six years, to excite students about the art in Paris museums. Then off to the relaxing countryside where we would step in the artists' shoes to paint on our own.

We took our granddaughter, Madeline FitzGerald, an art student at Rock Hill High, for the same reasons. She is tall and blonde and quickly noted there weren't many blonde French people. She bought a fashionable scarf and black cap and soon was on her way to becoming a Francophile.

"I wanted to blend in," said Madeline, who altered her hairstyle as well. She even mastered the Metro, but under our watch, we decided not to turn our Rock Hill girl loose in such a sumptuous city. Besides, it was more fun to be right there, sensing her awe as she cruised down the Seine, past the Louvre and Eiffel Tower and discovered her name on the Madeleine Church and Ste. Marie Madeleine statue.

"I felt very important, like I was a part of it," she said.

New foods were a challenge she relished, as she downed escargots, rabbit, mussels and even fried pigs ears.

"I felt accomplished," she said, "and not grossed out. "

The first morning in Paris, we stood at Notre Dame, surrounded by tourists and gypsies, one eye squinted, pencil in extended hand, measuring the historic cathedral. Seymour started us on the bell towers, having us measure from top to bottom to get the height and perspective right. Somehow my cathedral ran off the page and I decided instead to shoot pictures of the gothic church and its peering gargoyles.

Rather than just "expressing ourselves," Seymour's techniques were traditional: planning the design, studying the subject, methodical sketching and finally adding color. Starting at Notre Dame and continuing through the Louvre, Musee d'Orsay, Cluny, Ste. Chapelle, and Orangerie, our classes and museum trail led through the ancient world, medieval art, Impressionism, French art and everything in between. Once, Seymour used a shady spot in Tuileries Garden as a classroom, scooping water from a pond to mix with watercolor paint and bring his sketch to life. I began to understand and appreciate the time-consuming work that goes into painting, from such huge creations as Gericault's "The Raft of the Medusa," with its shipwrecked bodies, to da Vinci's surprisingly small "Mona Lisa," with all that blur around her smile. Now, I will prepare for museums and never drift past a painting without trying to analyze the artist's intent.