Rottembourg Castle

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Rottembourg Castle, view of the courtyard around 1900

The Rottembourg Castle ( French Château de Rottembourg ) is a former country estate and an abandoned monastery in the municipality of Montgeron in the Essonne department .

description

Rottembourg Castle is located on the traditional chemin de Bourgogne , the arterial road from Paris towards Burgundy . In the municipality of Montgeron, located about 18 kilometers southeast of the French capital, winemakers and traders first settled and there were inns such as the Lion d'or or the Grand Cerf . In addition, there were country houses of the Parisian upper class such as Le Moustier , the Chateau des Prés and the Château de Rottembourg , which were used for hunting trips, for example.

The property, now known as Rottembourg Castle, initially stretched from Grand'rue (now Avenue de la République) to the banks of the Yerres . The construction of the Paris – Marseille railway line resulted in the division of the property between 1846 and 1849, so that the current property no longer extends to the river and is considerably smaller than the original palace gardens.

The castle buildings have been changed and expanded several times. The wing facing the park side is the oldest part of the building. It dates from the beginning of the 18th century, although the builder and architect are not known. One of the early owners of the castle was Jean Brongniart, who was a relative of the chemist and court pharmacist Antoine-Louis Brongniart .

In 1790, Jean-Jacques Bérard bought the castle, whose family had made a substantial fortune through the French East India Company . Under Bérard, the house was redesigned in the Louis-seize style , the early form of classicism . Architecturally, this old part of the building shows itself with a basement and three floors above. On the garden side, an external staircase decorated with balustrades leads to the ground floor. The flat gable roof covered mezzanine floor is adorned by a central triangular pediment. In addition, the garden was redesigned from a formal French style to an English landscape park with artificial grottos and ponds.

In 1823 General Henri Rottembourg bought the property that has been named after him ever since. Rottembourg lived in the castle until the end of his life in 1857. He is considered an important benefactor in the city of Montgeron, as he sold parts of the property in order to use the proceeds for the new church Eglise Saint-Jacques le Majeur , the construction of a school and the old town hall finance. The square in front of the church is now called Place de Rottembourg . After Henri Rottembourg, Alexander von Hübner , the Austrian ambassador in Paris, used the castle for a time.

Around 1865, the Parisian real estate entrepreneur Alphonse Raingo acquired Rottembourg Castle, who used the property as a second home. His daughter Alice with her husband Ernest Hoschedé and their children were repeatedly among the visitors . After the death of Alphonse Raingo in 1870, Alice Hoschedé inherited the castle. She and her husband received a number of contemporary artists in the castle, including Émile Auguste Carolus-Duran , who also lives in Montgeron . He portrayed Alice Hoschedé in the garden of the property ( Museum of Fine Arts, Houston ). In the summer of 1876, Édouard Manet visited the Hoschedés in Rottemboug Castle. He painted the son Jacques Hoschedé in the garden picture Child in the Flowers ( National Museum of Western Art , Tokyo) and created the double portrait of Ernest Hoschedé and his daughter Marthe ( Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes , Buenos Aires).

In July 1876, Claude Monet came to Montgeron as a guest and stayed - with interruptions - until December of that year with the Hoschedés. He had received the order from Ernest Hoschedé to paint four decorative pictures for the salon of the castle. These paintings are Pond in Montgeron and Garden Corner in Montgeron (both Hermitage , Saint Petersburg ), Turkeys ( Musée d'Orsay , Paris) and The Hunt (private collection). While three of these pictures show landscape views of the park or the surroundings of the property, the picture turkeys also shows the garden facade of Rottembourg Castle, which at that time still had a reddish facade. Monet and Alcie Hoschedé probably got to know each other better during the months in Montgeron. Years later they lived together as a couple and were married in 1892. Some authors suspected that a love affair between the two began as early as the summer of 1876 in Rottembourg Castle, but there is no evidence for this.

  • Claude Monet: Pond at Montgeron , 1876

  • Claude Monet: Garden Corner in Montgeron , 1876

  • Claude Monet: Turkeys , 1876

  • Claude Monet: The Hunt , 1876

In 1877 Ernest Hoschedé got into financial difficulties, as a result of which his wife had to sell Rottembourg Castle. After that, the property changed hands several times. After the First World War, the city ​​of Montgeron intended to purchase Rottembourg Castle to house the town hall (Hôtel de Ville). The war memorial at the entrance to the property on avenue de la République dates from this period. However, the city decided on a different location and Rottembourg Castle was sold to the Carmelite Order Carmel de Saint-Denis in 1922 , who founded a monastery there. Corresponding modifications and extensions followed, including a cloister and a chapel. The current diocese of Évry-Corbeil-Essonnes has been using the buildings since the monastery was dissolved in 1988 . On the one hand there are administrative offices in the diocesan house (maison diocésaine), and on the other hand parts of the building are used as retirement homes for priests of the diocese. In addition, nuns of the Order Filles de la charité du Sacré-Cœur de Jésus live in the castle .

The park of Rottembourg Castle has been protected as a site classé since 1982 . It can occasionally be viewed by the public, for example on Monument Open Day in September.

literature

  • Ville de Montgeron (Ed.): Montgeron mag , issue No. 158 of December 3, 2010.
  • Commune de Montgeron (ed.): Plan local d'urbanisme . Montgeron 2013 ( pdf )
  • Dominique Lobstein: Defense et illustration de l'impressionnisme: Ernest Hoschedé et son "Brelan de Salons" (1890) . L'Echelle de Jacob. Dijon 2008, ISBN 978-2-913224-76-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Commune de Montgeron (ed.): Plan local d'urbanisme , p. 10.
  2. ↑ Article Découvrir: Le château de Rottembourg in Montgeron mag, edition No. 158 of December 3, 2010, p. 23.
  3. ↑ Commune de Montgeron (ed.): Plan local d'urbanisme , p. 10.
  4. ↑ Commune de Montgeron (ed.): Plan local d'urbanisme , p. 10.
  5. ↑ Commune de Montgeron (ed.): Plan local d'urbanisme , p. 10.
  6. ↑ Commune de Montgeron (ed.): Plan local d'urbanisme , p. 10.
  7. ↑ Information on the Eglise Saint-Jacques le Majeur and Place de Rottembourg on the website of the city of Montgeron.
  8. ↑ Historical view of the garden side of Rottembourg Castle, postcard with information on the previous residents
  9. ^ Dominique Lobstein: Défense et illustration de l'impressionnisme: Ernest Hoschedé et son "Brelan de Salons" (1890) , p. 10.
  10. ↑ Le jeune Monet trouva l'inspiration à Montgeron , article in Le Parisien of July 7, 2009.
  11. ^ Anne Distel: Impressionism, the first collectors , pp. 100-103.
  12. ↑ Dorothee Hansen sees no evidence of a relationship between Alice Hoschedé and Claude Monet in 1876. See Dorothee Hansen: Monet and Camille - Biography of a Relationship in Dorothee Hansen, Wulf Herzogenrath: Monet and Camille - Portraits of Women in Impressionism , p. 34.
  13. ↑ Commune de Montgeron (ed.): Plan local d'urbanisme , p. 10.
  14. ↑ See information on the diocesan house in the former Carmelite monastery
  15. ↑ See information on the old people's home in the former Carmelite monastery
  16. ↑ Information on the current use of the castle on the website of the city of Montgeron
  17. ↑ Commune de Montgeron (ed.): Plan local d'urbanisme , p. 10.

Coordinates: 48 ° 42 ′ 30 ″  N , 2 ° 27 ′ 24 ″  E