On trail of art world's greats through Normandy

Rivers are traditionally seen as feminine, but are there any quite as overtly so as the Seine? She cuts a swathe through the French capital, the bohemian Rive Gauche on her left and Haussmann's very correct boulevards on her right, before sashaying out into the countryside. On her nonchalant way to a rendezvous with the sea, the most French of rivers describes a series of intensely seductive curves, for all the world like a Cancan dancer swinging pneumatic hips.And among those who have been most seduced are the school of artists collectively known as the Impressionists. From the 1870s their paintings captured the river in all her capricious moods - in gaudy summer sun, under grim overcast skies, in chilly leafless winter. And she glides not only through the seasons but also the full gamut of aesthetic variations. Flowers sprout on her shores, cliffs tower timelessly over her, but then so do chimneys belching industrial smoke.This stretch of the Seine does not necessarily take one to the most entrancingly beautiful corner of France. There are more soaring landscapes as well as regions which feel more aromatically provincial. It doesn't boast those things we tend to associate with France. It's hard to claim that you have escaped to the deepest, greenest corner of rural France. For that you need to head to more distant wildernesses. But the stretch of waterway linking Paris and Rouen has its own kind of unique and beguiling quality, and it's the proximity of two cities which accentuates its allure. It's partly to do with the frisson of history: the stretch of land has been integral to France's sense of itself since the Middle Ages as it strove to push the English out of Normandy and back across the sea (only for English-speaking invaders to make a welcome return in 1944). But there is also the way in which the landscape was memorialised on canvas by a group of painters who, as a school driving one another forward towards fresh discovery, are second only to the Renaissance Florentines.Although the river begins among hills in the belly of the French land mass, a journey along the Seine of the Impressionists must begin in Paris, where the waters slide by under the splendid gaze of the Musée d'Orsay. This is the permanent home to a collection of 60 Impressionist works bequeathed to the state by a painter-collector called Gustave Caillebotte in 1894. It was through these paintings, later enlarged upon and embellished, that a lot of us will have fallen in love with Impressionism. I am certainly one of them. Returning 25 years on, I am shocked above all to see how Manet's Le Déjeuner Sur L'Herbe with its naked female picnicker still has the power to ruffle feathers, much as it stunned the Parisian establishment. So much for chocolate boxes. These were artists guided by a revolutionary spirit of invention, whose works were first exhibited outside the disapproving mainstream in 1874.In Manet's background a woman by a boat bathes in sheltered waters which presumably feed into the Seine itself. In Monet's paintings at the Musée d'Orsay, meanwhile, they are all sails glinting white and pregnant with wind. In fact, the boats you see on the river now are stouter and/or faster, long tanker-like barges chugging towards La Manche and jumbo river buses, as well as the odd speedboat tugging a water-skier. In fact, the best place to observe a river is not always on it. The first stop on my tour is at La Roche Guyon, a pretty village hemmed tightly into the blanched chalk cliffs cut by the Seine meandering round the corner. A sturdy turret looks down on a château which seems to grow organically out of the hills. It's possible to suppose that this classically French spot has changed very little in 200 or 300 years, with its single road, proud municipal hall and quiet roadside bars. No doubt it was the sense of safety, allied to comfort that persuaded Field-Marshall Rommel to take up residence and establish the Wehrmacht's high command as the Allies invaded Normandy in 1944. He had very good taste, I think while strolling along the sun-baked grassy path as the river glides serenely by, though not quite as good as Monet. From / The National