Georges Rouault

Charles Hall Thorndike (acquired from the artist)
Paul & Marcelle Hertzog, Paris (by descent from the above)
Private Collection, Paris (acquired from the estate of the above)
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Strasbourg, Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain, Georges Rouault, Formes, couleur, harmonie, 2007, no. 33, illustrated p. 116

Executed on card laid down on cradled panel. There is no evidence of retouching under ultra-violet light. Apart from a 5cm line of stable craquelure in the upper left quadrant, this work is in very good condition. Colours: overall fairly accurate in the catalogue illustration.
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Rouault always maintained a special relationship with the Breton landscape. He was a child of the city, growing up amid buildings and concrete. He had little experience of nature until a trip to Brittany at the age of 14, where he discovered the beauty of trees, forests and fields, untouched by the hand of urbanization. "At fourteen," Rouault wrote, "I was very surprised by Brittany, because I had no knowledge of the countryside. I walked all day long in this lovely area on many occasions without meeting a soul" (quoted in Rouault, l'Œuvre peint by Bernard Dorival & Isabelle Rouault, Monte-Carlo, 1988).

At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the painter rediscovered the landscapes of his youth when he and his family fled Paris and spent the year in northern Brittany. It was from this trip that Rouault took inspiration for his series of Breton landscapes, of which this work is numbered. These landscapes use richer, darker colours, creating a more dramatic and striking space in which the figures in the foreground seem poised to begin some long journey. Rouault, as with most of the rest of France, was concerned with the outcome of the war, but he seemed to find solace in the sublime landscape that surrounded him, escaping through his paintings from the turmoil that had engulfed his homeland.