This fascinating account brings to life the history of Port-Vendres, a vital Mediterranean port from antiquity to the present day. This deep water harbour has always been a key location, close to the border between France and Spain, where the Pyrenees drop down into the Mediterranean. It has sheltered Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Visigoths and Moors, the French, the Spanish, as they traded and fought their way around the Mediterranean coast. Soldiers, sailors and fishermen have landed here for centuries, making this small town a veritable mirror of the Mediterranean world.
Author Jane Mann has been researching and observing it all from her vantage point facing the entrance to the port, and offers a delightful and intriguing picture of a place she has come to love and call her home.
On the border between France and Spain, fought over for centuries, littered with castles, monasteries and tiny hilltop villages, divided by rivers and gorges, is the département of the Pyrénées-Orientales. Dominated by Canigou, the magical, mystical mountain, it is a sun-drenched land of vineyards and olive groves. Blessed with spectacular scenery, it is rich in art and history and, for walkers, cyclists, skiers, sailors, divers, swimmers, windsurfers and mountaineers, a paradise.
Jane Mann and Kate Hareng work together to produce P.-O. Life, the quarterly Anglophone magazine of the Pyrénées-Orientales. Both are passionate about the multi-faceted region in which they have chosen to live and know it intimately. In their book they invite you to explore and enjoy this southernmost corner of France, from high Pyrenean peaks to sparkling Mediterranean sea.
Jane has researched, photographed and collected a book-full of diverse and exciting places of interest for people of all ages and tastes to visit. Her descriptions are interspersed with Kate's useful vocabulary, French exercises, `Did-you-knows', tongue twisters and jokes.
Lavishly illustrated, the lively blend of information and essential facts make their helpful and instructive guide a must-have for visitors and residents alike.
As the century turned Aristide Maillol was simplifying the sensuous lines of his monumental sculptures in the small seaside town of Banyuls-sur-Mer. By 1905 Matisse and Derain were exploding pure colour all over their Fauvist paintings just along the coast in Collioure. George Daniel de Monfreid was taking delivery of Gauguin's canvases from the South Seas at his Château St Clément in Corneilla-de-Conflent and sharing them with Gustave Fayet of the Abbaye de Fontfroide near Narbonne. And, a few years later, Frank Burty Haviland, Manolo and Déodat de Séverac, whilst on a visit to the sculptor Maillol, discovered Céret. When in 1910 they were joined by Picasso, then by Braque and Juan Gris, Céret was well on the way to becoming known as the Mecca of Cubism.
Why the Roussillon? How did the revolution reach Paris and then the world from two obscure towns on the Mediterranean edge of the Pyrenees? How did the local painters and collectors contribute to the revolution? What were the links with the Paris dealers and the all important Salons? Who were the artists' wives and mistresses? And what mark have they left here?...
In Art Revolution in the Roussillon their stories come alive. Tales of artists born and bred in this remote and at the time little known corner of France are intertwined with the stories of the visiting artists from Paris who were challenging and changing the face of modern art. The gathering of these tales and the exploration of the Roussillon's recent art history has proved has proved a fascinating task.
