Telling Stories

The walls can speak in this French nature artist’s home, whispering tales of ephemeral beauty from the garden exquisitely captured in paint.

French naturalist painter Claire Basler is renowned for her sensuous paintings of flowers, stems and trees. In the Château de Beauvoir, her home of 40 rooms on five hectares in the Auvergne, she has found her true dimension with the vast canvases she craved. With partner Pierre, Claire has restored and decorated other homes in the past 10 years, including a former smithy in Paris and an old country school, but restoring this rundown château has been their main challenge. The pair love their ‘two-getherness’ in the immense space but enjoy seeing the place filled with visitors (such as two weekends in May and June when about 500 people visit) “adding life to our life”, as she says.

“When we bought the château we did not know that my paintings would give the old building life and become its main attraction,” Claire says. “Pierre and I work as a team. He is self-taught and has done most of the restoration jobs, including all the smithing, carpentry and masonry work, and he makes the frames and packing crates for my paintings as well.”