Physical description
Men and women in traditional dresses chatting and buying fruits and cakes while leaving the church in a village.
Place of Origin
Mont-Saint-Père, France (painted)
Date
1877 (painted)
Artist/maker
Lhermitte, born 1844 - died 1925 (artist)
Materials and Techniques
oil on canvas
Marks and inscriptions
'L. Lhermitte'
Dimensions
Height: 40.6 cm estimate, Width: 57.8 cm estimate
Object history note
Commissioned from the artist (as a pair with CAI 68) by Constantine Alexander Ionides around April 1877 (a letter in a private collection from Lhermitte in Paris to Ionides dated 19 April 1877 mentions that one of his two pictures is finished and that the other would be ready in time for his next trip to London). listed in Ionides' inventory of November 1881 as either 'Marché au pommes' or 'Marché au fruits' by Lhermitte, each with a valuation of £75; bequeathed by Constantine Alexander Ionides, 1900.
Historical significance: This painting is typical of Lhermitte's peasant genre scenes.
The title identifies the present work as a religious festival known in Breton as a 'Pardon' in the village of Plourin in Finistere in Brittany. According to Lhermitte's diary it was executed in Mont-Saint-Père, the artist's native town, after sketches and documents brought back from Brittany in the previous few years. The artist focused here on the representation of traditional costume and the popular culture which combined the sale of apples, cakes, etc. with Christian ritual (the Pardon).
Comparable market scenes include Apple Market, Landerneau, Brittany dated c. 1878, in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Market at Château-Thierrry, executed in 1879, in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid.
Historical context note
19th-century French art is marked by a succession of movements based on a more or less close relationship with nature. At the beginning of the century, Romantic artists were fascinated by nature they interpreted as a mirror of the mind. They investigated human nature and personality, the folk culture, the national and ethnic origins, the medieval era, the exotic, the remote, the mysterious and the occult. This movement was heralded in France by such painter as Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863). In its opposition to academic art and its demand for a modern style Realism continued the aims of the Romantics. They assumed that reality could be perceived without distortion or idealization, and sought after a mean to combine the perception of the individual with objectivity. This reaction in French painting against the Grand Manner is well represented by Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) who wrote a 'Manifesto of Realism', entitled Le Réalisme published in Paris in 1855. These ideas were challenged by the group of the Barbizon painters, who formed a recognizable school from the early 1830s to the 1870s and developed a free, broad and rough technique. They were mainly concerned by landscape painting and the rendering of light. The works of Narcisse Virgile Diaz de la Peña (1807-1876), Jules Dupré (1811-1889), Théodore Rousseau (1812-1867), Constant Troyon (1810-1865) and Jean-François Millet (1814-1875) anticipate somehow the plein-air landscapes of the Impressionists.
Descriptive line
Oil painting, 'Le Pardon de Plourin, Brittany', Léon-Augustin Lhermitte, 1877
Bibliographic References (Citation, Note/Abstract, NAL no)
Kauffmann, C.M. Catalogue of Foreign Paintings, II. 1800-1900 , London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1973, pp. 64-65, cat. no. 139.
The following is the full text of the entry:
Leon Augustin L'HERMITTE (1844-1925)
French School
Born at Mont-Saint-Père, near Château-Thierry, he was a pupil of H. Lecoq de Boisbaudran in Paris. He painted mainly rustic scenes with peasants, which he exhibited at the Paris Salon from 1864. He was in London in 1871-72 and thereafter settled in Paris again. In 1910 he became a Commander of the Legion of Honour.
139
LE PARDON DE PLOURIN, BRITTANY: PEASANTS LEAVING CHURCH Signed lower left L. Lhermitte
Canvas
16 X 22 ¾ (40.6 X 57.8)
Ionides Bequest
CAI.69
Prov. Constantine Alexander Ionides; bequeathed to the Museum in 1900.
Lit. Long, Cat. Ionides Coll., 1925, p. 38.
Hamel, M. Catalogue de l'exposition Léon Lhermitte, Oshkosh, The paine Art Cebtre Arboretum, 1974, C 52, cat. 49.
Jules Breton and the French Rural Tradition, Omaha: Joslyn Art Museum, 1983, p. 84.
Exhibition catalogue.
Delouche, D, Les peintres et le Paysan breton, Paris, 1989, p. 64.
Le Pelley Fonteny, M., Léon Lhermitte (1844-1925). Catalogue Raisonné, Paris, 1991, cat. 18, p. 93.
Materials
Oil paint; Canvas
Techniques
Oil painting
Subjects depicted
Peasants; Plourin
Categories
Christianity; Paintings
Collection code
PDP
