It was once the home of a 19th-century minister, later the holiday resort of art patrons at the beginning of the 20th century as well as eventually a field hospital during the Allied landings in Normandy in 1944.

Taking into consideration the numerous positions occupied throughout his professional life, it is unlikely that the Count lived in a permanent fashion at Ranville before 1836, the date from which he was given a compulsory order of residence.

[13] This modern addition rendered independent rooms until then opening one upon the other ("en enfilade" in French), a system of circulation through houses and other buildings still prevalent in the 18th century.

The Count arranged for moldings and parquet flooring in different fine woods in the left wing which was reserved for the master of the house, family and guests.

[16] In this same era, there was a walled road which led from the château to the private crypt of the Guernons which is found alongside the church of Ranville in the centre of the village.

These cards are the work of small local publishers[18] and are taken from photographs showing the principal facade of the château with its flight of steps and a promontory above a part of the barn, no longer in existence, which must have served as an observatory.

No longer permanently inhabited by this descendant of the Count, the property was rented to a succession of tenants, among whom figure Alexandre Natanson,[20] editor of La Revue Blanche (The White Review).

[24] Should one refer to the proposal of Anna de Noailles who said that "Monsieur Vuillard paints all that he sees",[25] particularly during his years of realism, the background of the work tells that at that point in time, the property was not as yet defined by walls.

[27] During the Second World War, the château which had belonged since 1933 to the honorary president of the Court of Appeal of Paris, Monsieur Jozon,[28] was requisitioned by the German occupation army in order to house members of the Organisation Todt.

This effort, however, stopped neither mortar fire nor enemy bombing, the result damaging most notably a part of the outbuildings serving as a canteen to the unit.

Careful restoration conserves and highlights the original materials of the construction of the château: ceiling beams, antique floor tommettes, the period chimneys and walls made of quarried stone of Caen.