Paul Sérusier

Kaplan Galleries, London

Sternberg Galleries, Chicago

The Modern Art Foundation, Geneva (sale: Sotheby Parke Bernet & Co., July 4, 1979, lot 236)

Marcel Guicheteau, Paul Serusier, Paris, 1976, no. 130, illustrated p. 225

Painted in 1897.

In 1893, Serusier moved to the village of Châteauneuf-du-Faou in Brittany.  Here, as when he lived in Huelgoat, the artist continued to focus on Breton subject matter, particularly the local women at work.  By depicting the women performing their daily tasks such as spinning, laundry and fetching water, Sérusier hoped to capture and document Brittany’s Celtic history before it was effaced by time.  During this period, Sérusier also began to infuse a type of spirituality in his work not evident before.  Fellow artist and friend Jan Verkade introduced Sérusier to the Benedictine artist and monk Desiderius Lenz, the founder of the Benedictine Art School in Beuron, Germany.  Lenz believed that the attention to nature and verisimilitude that had dominated painting since the Renaissance was misguided and that the emphasis on detail had led art away from the idea.  Under his influence, Sérusier not only continued to pursue his Pont-Aven interests, but developed an even more advanced set of philosophical and aesthetic theories that would have tremendous impact on the body of his later work.