Why Guernsey made a big Impression on Renoir

In September 1883, the Impressionist Renoir arrived on the island of Guernsey, intending to stay for no longer than a few days. He left five weeks later, his suitcase bulging with paintings and sketches.

This autumn, 140 years on, Guernsey is staging a landmark exhibition, Renoir on Guernsey 1883, hoping to attract new visitors to the island who will be as captivated by its charms as Renoir was. The Candie Museum in the capital, St Peter Port, has built new temporary facilities to cope with the crowds coming to the show, which includes ten works by Renoir borrowed from museums and private collections all over the world.

A great place to begin a walk in Renoir’s footsteps is Moulin Huet Bay, on the island’s south coast. This picturesque cove is virtually unchanged since 1883: a steep cliff path with stunning views of the rocky coastline leads down to a pale sandy beach which, then as now, is a popular spot for all-weather swimmers.

Moulin Huet Bay is framed on the Renoir Trail

The artist was captivated by the ever-changing light at Moulin Huet, and by the swimmers who got changed behind rocks and took to the waves in flimsy costumes, cheerfully disregarding the puritanical mores of the Victorian era. Some scholars believe Guernsey was an artistic turning point for Renoir, inspiring him to paint nudes in Impressionist-style landscapes, something he would continue to do for the rest of his career.

Today, visitors to Moulin Huet can follow the Renoir Walk, visiting five locations where the artist painted. Happily, one of these is at the newly renamed Renoir Tea Garden, a cafe for 100 years but refurbished and reopened in September by Guernsey restauranteur Natalia Silvester. Customers can partake of delicious salads, cakes and locally made herbal teas while enjoying one of the best views on the island.

Guernsey, the smaller of the two main Channel Islands, measures about six miles from end to end, so nothing is far away from anything else. Its narrow roads, quaint villages and 35mph speed limit encourages a slower pace of life. While tourism is an important part of the economy, the island seems remarkably free of big resort developments, and is able to absorb the hundreds of passengers disgorged by cruise ships without ever feeling crowded.

St Peter Port, a pretty, bustling town overlooking a complex of harbours, is a good base for a visit. The Old Government House Hotel, just up the hill from the town’s main shopping street, offers five-star luxury, a spa, cocktail lounge and a fine-dining restaurant, The Brasserie, specialising in seafood and steak. All the dairy products come from local Guernsey cows, renowned for their creamy milk.

A little further up the hill, La Fregate Hotel and Restaurant offers the chance to dine on local produce while enjoying a superb view down over the town and harbour. Octopus, tucked in next to the beach with views to Herm and Sark, specialises in fish and seafood (the sea bass was delicious), and The Hook is known for sushi and beef Wellington, a contemporary take on the Guernsey staples of seafood and steak.

Castle Cornet, which presides over the harbour in St Peter Port, is home to no fewer than four museums and a cannon which is fired every day at noon. The earliest fortifications here date from the 13th century and have been built and rebuilt through subsequent conflicts, most recently during the Nazi occupation of the island in the 1940s.

The occupation still feels like a piece of living history. Older people remember families being separated, the deportation of non-Guernsey residents to prison camps and the evacuation of schoolchildren. Locals endured severe food shortages and relied on Red Cross packages while the little island became a billet for some 12,000 German troops.

The Liberation Memorial on the harbour front at St Peter Port was unveiled on the 50th anniversary of liberation in May 1995, and two museums offer a chance to explore the history of the occupation: the La Valette Underground Military Museum at St Peter Port, housed in a series of tunnels built by the Nazis to store fuel, and the German Occupation Museum at Les Houards.

Brouillard à Guernsey (Fog on Guernsey) was painted by Renoir in 1883, above

The latter is the personal collection of Guernsey man Richard Heaume, who began as a schoolboy collecting spent bullets in the fields. Housed in a complex of cottages much bigger than it looks from the outside, it is a fascinating collection of objects, documents and even vehicles.

But best of all are the stories. While the local press published pictures of German officers and urged people not to panic, the Guernsey Underground News Service (GUNS) printed 300 copies of their secret news sheet every day on tomato packing paper. A cinema projectionist made V-for-Victory badges out of coins during the screenings of German films, and a local woman, who was jailed for four months for saying “Heil, Churchill!”, was known as Mrs Churchill for the remainder of her life on the island.

Guernsey’s most famous resident, however, was arguably the French novelist Victor Hugo, who arrived in 1855, exiled from France when Napoleon seized power, and later evicted from both Belgium and Jersey. In St Peter Port the writer, who had never owned a home in his life, bought Hauteville House and set about turning it into a residence which perfectly reflected his ideas and personality.

Now open to the public as a museum, Hauteville is gloriously idiosyncratic, from the billiards table in the front room to the spectacular fireplace-cum-dresser which Hugo designed himself in the shape of a cathedral. Whether or not one agrees that he - as he himself once claimed - missed his calling as a decorator, one can’t help but be amazed by his ingenious upcycling (an old door made into a dining table) and daring fusion-inspired styles.

On the second floor he kept an elaborate four-poster bed in which he proposed to die (it remained unused as he returned to France when the Republic was restored in 1870), while upstairs, in his spartan but light-filled private attic, he finished Les Misérables, standing at a fold-down desk. However, Hugo had at least one thing in common with many Guernsey residents today: he was a keen outdoor swimmer. He began every day with a dip in St Peter Port’s complex of Victorian lidos, now recently restored and used by hardy Guernsey residents in all weathers.

Given that nothing is far away on Guernsey, it’s well worth the trip to the Les Vauxbelets Valley to see the work of another eccentric resident. In 1914, Brother Déodat Antoine set about building a miniature version of the grotto at Lourdes. Today his Little Chapel – rebuilt twice after being criticised for being too small – is big enough for two or three visitors, a gorgeous mosaic of broken pottery, pebbles and shells.

It also well worth a trip to the West side of the island to watch the sunset, or to taste the lobster linguine in the Cobo Bay Hotel.

From its charming eccentrics to its mellow climate, its dramatic coastline to its easy-going pace, it doesn’t take long for Guernsey to get under the skin. Quickly one finds, like Renoir, that a few days is not enough and one could stay for much longer than planned.

Renoir in Guernsey 1883 at the Candie Museum ends 17 December, www.artforguernsey.com. Classic Double Rooms at The Old Government House Hotel start at £265 per night, based on two adults sharing and including breakfast. Renoir package (during the exhibition): two nights accommodation including a three-course dinner at the Brasserie, a French-themed afternoon and tickets to the Renoir show, from £320 per person.