TIMOTHY CORRIGAN - A Fresh Start for France's Chateau De Gallerande.

Source: Architectural Digest

Author: Text by Michael Peppiatt/Photographs by Marina Faust

The quickest sures way of absorbing the culture of France would be to buy one if its great historic houses, redesign it for life in the 21st century, the assume your role as the latest in a long line of lords of the manor. Radical and risky as the move might sound, this is exactly what Los Angeles-based designer Timothy Corrigan did a couple of years ago. Today, with a much-improved grasp of all things French, the tall, energetic American is no only thriving in his European experience but looking for ways to spend more time in the ancient chateau that he has skillfully brought back to life.
"I was so caught up in the whole adventure that I didn't really think of the risks attached," Corrigan says. "I'd lived in France before, and I'd bought and redesigned a couple of other properties - but nothing on this scale. From the beginning I knew I was looking for something exceptional. It wasn't about needing a place to live; it was more about fantasy."
Corrigan concentrated on the Loire Valley "because there is so much fantastic architecture here," he says. "I visited lots of houses before I chanced on Chateau de Gallerande. When I first saw the setting of the place, and later when I was left to wander through one paneled room after another, I felt a kind of magic, as if I had gone into a different realm. There was no looking back."
What Corrigan sensed was that the building that stood before him, with its fortified towers and impenetrable walls was much more than a fine house in beautiful surroundings. Over many centuries and countless twists of fate, the chateau had come to represent a sizable slice of French history - as its new owner was quick to learn. "I think of a house as the sum of the people to have lived in it," he says. "One of Gallerande's first owners had fought in the Crusades. In the 13th century the Gallerande family married into the powerful Clermont family, and the chateau remained their ancestral home for some 600 years, until Louise de Clermont-Gallerande, one of the renowned beauties of her day, gambled it away in a 1772 card game.
"The story doesn't end there, of course," Corrigan continues. "More of the original fortress had been torn down in the 15th century to make way for a grand chateau, which was extensively remodeled in the mid-19th century by Count Geoffrey de Ruille. The last family member to live there was his granddaughter, Anne, who proved to be as colorful as any of the previous owners," he says. "Having scandalized her parents by becoming the mistress of the great Spanish bullfighter Luis Miguel Dominguin, she never married but went on living at the family home until 1987, having surrounded herself with some 40 peacocks and any number of other animals that wandered around the very formal French gardens that can still be found on the estate. But then exotic animals have always been part of Gallerande," added the designer, "ever since the 17th century, when the chateau housed the first elephant ever to have been brought to this country."
Somewhat less entrancing than the tales of Gallerande's past, Corrigan was to discover, was the chateau's overall state. "I won't pretend there wasn't a horrendous amount to do," he admits. "That was to be expected of the risks attached," Corrigan says. "I'd lived in France before, and I'd bought and redesigned a couple of other properties - but nothing on this scale. From the beginning I knew I was looking for something exceptional. It wasn't about needing a place to live; it was more about fantasy." Corrigan concentrated on the Loire Valley "because there is so much fantastic architecture here," he says. "I visited lots of houses before I chanced on Chateau de Gallerande. When I first saw the setting of the place, and later when I was left to wander through one paneled room after another, I felt a kind of magic, as if I had gone into a different realm. There was no looking back." What Corrigan sensed was that the building that stood before him, with its fortified towers and impenetrable walls was much more than a fine house in beautiful surroundings. Over many centuries and countless twists of fate, the chateau had come to represent a sizable slice of French history - as its new owner was quick to learn. "I think of a house as the sum of the people to have lived in it," he says. "One of Gallerande's first owners had fought in the Crusades. In the 13th century the Gallerande family married into the powerful Clermont family, and the chateau remained their ancestral home for some 600 years, until Louise de Clermont-Gallerande, one of the renowned beauties of her day, gambled it away in a 1772 card game. "The story doesn't end there, of course," Corrigan continues. "More of the original fortress had been torn down in the 15th century to make way for a grand chateau, which was extensively remodeled in the mid-19th century by Count Geoffrey de Ruille. The last family member to live there was his granddaughter, Anne, who proved to be as colorful as any of the previous owners," he says. "Having scandalized her parents by becoming the mistress of the great Spanish bullfighter Luis Miguel Dominguin, she never married but went on living at the family home until 1987, having surrounded herself with some 40 peacocks and any number of other animals that wandered around the very formal French gardens that can still be found on the estate. But then exotic animals have always been part of Gallerande," added the designer, "ever since the 17th century, when the chateau housed the first elephant ever to have been brought to this country."
The designer hired craftsmen in the area who were able to modernize the chateau without drastically altering or damaging its basic structure. "There's a delicate balance in respecting an old building and making it comfortable," he says. "Achieving that balance became my rule of thumb for the whole renovation. You have to honor what's there while making it work for the way we live today - which includes a lot more bathrooms."
In all his projects, Corrigan favors an eclectic mix of styles and periods. From an early age he felt equally at home with his grandparent's antique furniture and his father's contemporary art. "I find hanging a Lichtenstein or a Stella over an antique commode creates a kind of energy and tension that you simply don't get when everything comes from one country and one point in time," Corrigan explains. "I'm no purist, and I feel that if you can successfully couple a piece of Art Deco furniture and a classical painting, the whole ambience becomes more inventive and more vibrant. I"ve spent half my life going around to galleries and auctions, antiques dealers and flea markets, in search of things that might interest me, and now I'm lucky to have a sufficiently large stock that I can choose from each time I undertake a new interior." For Gallerande, Corrigan felt "particularly free, because I only really had myself to please," he says. "So I indulged my taste for contrasts by coloring some of the boiserie acid green and bright yellow to bring out the mellowness of the antiques. I especially like the idea that you can walk into a room and see something quite unexpected."
Yet the atmosphere at Chateau de Gallerande remains very much that of a grand European house, with the American designer's more daring touches being integrated into a harmonious and predominantly traditional whole. "Even though I like to shake things up a little," Corrigan says, "I aim for a kind of look that usually takes generations to achieve. To be surrounded by history but live in it on my own terms is for me like having a long-held dream come true."

Architectural Digest

The Photographer as Storyteller — Historic New England

Reed intended each of these images to work together with other photographs to tell a story in the context of a photo-essay. This section helps us recognize the rhetorical power of the medium--to see that photography has a point of view, shaped to varying degrees by the photographer, picture editor, and publication. Did Reed take sides in the Rosenberg trial demonstrations? Are the pictures of then-Senator John F. Kennedy sympathetic to, or critical of, the young politician? Reed's numerous photo essays show that he generally took seriously his responsibility to be an objective reporter. The image of Maine's Edmund S. Muskie waiting for gubernatorial election results could be seen as unflattering, but in combination with the sympathetic post-election photograph of him with his daughter, we realize that Reed attempted to be true to the story as he experienced it. Photographs shape our understanding of history, and some of Reed's photo-essays covered stories of obvious historical importance, such as the Rosenberg protest or JFK as senator. Others probably seemed less telling at the time, such as the shoot at the home of Tasha Tudor, a well-known children's book author, or the afternoon he spent at a country auction in Albany, Vermont. In retrospect, though, all of the images tell stories of what it meant to live in 1950s and 1960s New England.
Kennedy
On the day Reed took his first Kennedy photographs, he recalls Mrs. Kennedy telling him that Ashe was writing a book about a young senator on his way to the presidency. The allusion was obvious, but I didn't take any of it seriously. Over the coming years, Reed would cover Kennedy for both Life andTime, capturing the young senator in his office, on the street, and campaigning for Foster Furcolo (John Foster Furcolo, Governor of Massachusetts, 1957-1961). During the period when Reed photographed JFK, the story was still largely local. Kennedy came from a prominent Boston family, and his presidential aspirations were largely covert.

ABOVE Senator and Mrs. John F. Kennedy, Hyannisport, Massachusetts, 1955	ABOVE John F. Kennedy, Hyannisport, Massachusetts, 1955	ABOVE Senator John F. Kennedy, Foster Furcolo Parade, East Boston, 1956
	ABOVE Boston's Finest, 1957	ABOVE John F. Kennedy at Newsstand, Boston, 1957

Country Auction

Characteristically, Reed decided to focus on the people attending this rural antiques auction rather than the event itself. In these images, he seems particularly concerned with the people's post-auction emotions. As the adrenaline of the sale subsides, does the reality of life with one's new treasures live up to the earlier anticipation?
ABOVE Antique Purchase, Albany, Vermont, 1951	ABOVE Keeping Dry, Albany, Vermont, 1951	ABOVE Couple at Auction, Albany, Vermont, 1951

Rosenberg

In June 1953, Reed spent an afternoon photographing protesters in front of the Massachusetts State House in Boston. Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who had been convicted in 1951 on espionage charges for passing secrets about nuclear weapons to the Soviet Union, were scheduled to be executed on June 19, 1953. The emotionally charged conflict spilled into the streets, where supporters of clemency clashed with those who favored the death penalty. A writer for Life magazine was trying to cover the story without the aid of a photographer. Seeing Reed, the reporter asked if he would be willing to cover the protests for him. Reed's acceptance marked the beginning of his six-year career as a photojournalist for Life.
ABOVE Rosenberg Vigil I, Boston, 1953	ABOVE Rosenberg Vigil II, Boston, 1953	ABOVE Rosenberg Vigil III, Boston, 1953
ABOVE Rosenberg Vigil IV, Boston, 1953

Muskie

Edmund S. Muskie started politics with a successful 1946 run for a seat in the Maine House of Representatives, where he served three consecutive terms. Here, Reed shows Muskie in his hometown on the day of the 1954 Maine gubernatorial election. Reed's pictures cover the story from the tension while the results were still coming in to the elation after they revealed Muskie had won. Like Kennedy, Muskie went on to a dramatic political career, becoming the first Democrat in Maine's history to be elected U.S. senator. He ran for president in 1968 and 1972, and finished his political career as Secretary of State in 1980-1981.
ABOVE Edmund S. Muskie, Rumford, Maine, 1954	ABOVE Edmund S. Muskie, with Daughter Rumford, Maine, 1954

Tasha Tudor

This Life photo-essay, "A Wedding in a Land of Dolls," described the fanciful wedding of dolls at the home of children's book author Tasha Tudor. Tudor famously eschewed the trappings of modern living and created instead a carefully constructed world based on nostalgia for pre-modern America. Reed took advantage of his time at Tudor's house to capture not only the wedding, his assigned subject, but a bit of this remarkable family's way of life.
ABOVE Girl with Wreath, Webster, New Hampshire, 1955	ABOVE Evening Chores, Webster, New Hampshire, 1955

A Changing World: New England in the Photographs of Verner Reed, 1950-1972

Organized by Historic New England, Boston, Massachusetts

All photographs are drawn from the collections of Historic New England, presented by the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities. They are part of the Verner Reed Archive, a collection of more than 26,000 negatives and prints, which was donated by Verner and Deborah Reed.

John R. Stomberg served as guest curator of the original exhibition.

The Photographer as Storyteller — Historic New England