Robert Tatin, Musée (La maison des champs)/Museum (The country house)

garden of meditation, western orientation (moon)
all pictures courtesy of Laurent Jacquy

The Robert Tatin Museum ranks among the important art environments of France.

Life and works

Robert Tatin (1902-1983) was a man of different professions. He worked as a ceramist, a carpenter, a mason, a decorator, a painter, just to mention some of his activities. From childhood on he had a lot of interest in art. Born in the Normandic city of Laval, at his 16th he left for Paris, to work there as a decorator and to follow art classes at the École des beaux arts.

After having fulfilled his military service, he returned to Laval around 1930, to start a construction company. In this job he also could express his artistic interests.

After the war, mr Tatin decided to fully go for an artistic career, so he moved again to Paris. He began a ceramics studio and participated in the artistic circles that re-inspired postwar cultural life in France.

In 1950, however, he decided to go to Brazil, being active in consulting musea. Mr Laval returned to France in 1960.

In 1962, when he was 60, he bought an old house in a community known as La Frénouse, in the neighbourhood of Laval. This is where, for the next 21 years, together with his wife Lise, he would create a visionary environment.

garden of meditation

The site

The creation is a collection of totem-like statues and a temple-like main building, the museum as such. The road of entrance, some 80 meters long, is lined up with 19 statues of coloured cement, some of them 2.5 m high, representing personalities like Jeanne d'Arc and Vercingétorix.

statues along the entrance road

One enters the court-yard of the museum through the mouth of an enormeous dragon. The walls of the bulding are extensively decorated. There is a Gate of the Giants, impersonating Rembrandt, van Gogh, Léonardo da Vinci, Goya and Delacroix.

The museum itself is, like the original house oriented east-west, and has a lot of symbolism in it (garden of meditation, rising sun in the east, moon at night in the west, a 6.5 m high statue of the Lady of All the World).

From 2002 the site is an official Musée de France, and it is open to the public all year (guided tours only). The house where mr and mrs Tatin lived, also can be visited.
After mr Tatin had passed away, he has been buried in the garden around the original house.

Documentation

* The museums website and french wikipedia have a more detailed description of the site (in french). So far I could not trace an adequate description of the environment in english.
* On Youtube there is a 10.43 video showing the statues along the entrance road and the garden of meditation (voice over in esperanto!)

In my weblog I am mainly dealing with autodidact artists, who make environments. Mr Tatin cannot be considered to be an autodidact, so I hesitated to write a note about him. I would not be too principal however. Mr Tatin cannot be said to have been a mainstream artist. At his later age, when creating an environment, he must have moved away from the art world as such.

He was an inspirator for a number of autodidact artists who made environments, like Jacques Lucas and Danielle Jacqui.

By the way, Laval houses a museum of naive art featuring Henri Rousseau and the city is the birthplace of Alfred Jarry (1873) who founded pataphysics and is celebrated every year with the Laval uburlesques festival

Robert Tatin

Musée (La maison des champs)

la Frénouse

53230 Cossé-le-Vivien, Mayenne, FR

open for the public, see the museum website for opening hours