Giverny leaves a lasting impression

Midway along the Japanese bridge came a sublime moment of déjà vu. I had seen this view before, in countless posters, postcards and art books. Visiting Impressionist painter Claude Monet's personal Garden of Eden, I was staring at a pond. Not any pond, mind you - the pond. The one made famous by the acknowledged giant of the Impressionists at the end of his life. The blue sky reflected between the lilies, the sun-dappled water, the azaleas and weeping willows, just as it was captured by the Master's brushstrokes. Illusorily - the crowd had melted away.

2010 marks Normandy's Year of the Impressionists, recognised as France's most radical and exciting artistic departure since the Renaissance. 40 miles from Paris in the Department of Eure, Giverny's Musee des Impressionistes with an attractive arbour-entrance, will display works by Monet, Renoir, Manet.. from April 1-July 18. Other museums showing Impressionist works include Rouen Fine Arts Museum, June 4-September 26, Caen's Fine Arts Museum, June-September, Le Havre's Andre Malraux Museum, June 12-September 19, Honfleur's Eugene Boudin Museum, July 3-October 4, and Thomas-Henry Arts Museum at Cherbourg-Octeville, June 14-September 12.

The painting theme as interior décor by talented modern French artists began as soon as I boarded Brittany Ferries' [Reservations/Information 0871 244 1400;  www.brittanyferries.com] Mont St Michel for the overnight trip from Portsmouth to Caen. Arriving at 6.45 in the morning, I linked up with the superb Autoroute de Normandie (A13) arriving at the outskirts of Vernon just short of Giverny - where the river banks were a haze reminiscent of an Impressionist painting.

At Giverny, you park your car (free) in a verdant meadow, and in the half-mile long village road in a bucolic setting you can stroll to the pretty museum, Monet's house, its dazzling gardens and famous lily pond. The artist lived there from 1883 until he died in 1926. When he arrived the water garden was merely a pond, later made into an aquatic garden by a River Epte diversion.

My lunch on the garden terrace at the rose-coloured Hotel Baudy began with Avocado with Crab, Chicken, potatoes gratinee and Apple Pie - each portion huge as if I was a starving painter. In 1886, impoverished American painter, William Metcalf, showed up at Gaston Baudy's Giverny café and was amazed to find Monet lived there and was thrilled to dine with the Master at his home.

The boarding house became Hotel Baudy, where paintings covered the walls often as B&B payment. Renoir, Rodin, Sisley, Pissaro stayed at the hotel. Monet and French Prime Minister, Clemenceau, were often seen talking together in the garden. Yet the majority of patrons were painters from over the Ocean and it eventually became known as the American Painters' Hotel.

Fitting, as it was the 1886 visit to America of Parisian gallery owner Durand-Ruel that turned the tide financially for struggling Impressionist painters from a life of grinding poverty and general public ridicule to one of relative affluence.