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Lot Essay
Painted in the summer of 1897, during Matisse’s third trip to Brittany, Paysage de Bretagne embodies the artist’s transition from a student of Impressionism to a master of Fauvism.
Matisse had first travelled to the island of Belle-Ile, off of Brittany’s coast, in 1895 with his friend and fellow artist Emile-Auguste Wéry. Matisse cut the trip short after witnessing Wéry squeeze paint directly from the tube onto his palette. Unable to fathom working side by side with such a rebel, Matisse left to tour other parts of Brittany. Yet, remarking upon this first visit to the region, he said: “I had only bistres and earth colors on my palette…I began to work from nature. And soon I was seduced by the brilliance of pure color. I returned from my trip with a passion for rainbow colors” (quoted in P. Schneider, Matisse, London, 2002, p. 59).
In depicting the island and its environs, Matisse was inspired by the example of two other painters who had captured the ferocious energy of Belle-Ile, with the waves crashing against its giant, jagged cliffs: Claude Monet and John Peter Russell. Monet had painted Belle-Ile in 1886, and Matisse is known to have seen those works, not least at the 1897 exhibition of the Caillebotte Bequest at the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris. As for the Australian painter Russell, he lived in Belle-Ile and Matisse stayed and painted with him on his trips there.
By the time of Matisse's final visit to the island in 1897, he was beginning to cement his individual approach to the Impressionist style and on his own path towards the avant-garde. In an impressionistic manner, Matisse captures in Paysage de Bretagne the island's atmospheric conditions through his loose and intuitive brushstrokes. Yet, this humble, rural landscape is bathed in a novel pink light, electrifying the scene and demonstrating the artist’s imaginative and emotional connection to color, a connection which would soon evolve into the wild pigments of Fauvism.
Matisse had first travelled to the island of Belle-Ile, off of Brittany’s coast, in 1895 with his friend and fellow artist Emile-Auguste Wéry. Matisse cut the trip short after witnessing Wéry squeeze paint directly from the tube onto his palette. Unable to fathom working side by side with such a rebel, Matisse left to tour other parts of Brittany. Yet, remarking upon this first visit to the region, he said: “I had only bistres and earth colors on my palette…I began to work from nature. And soon I was seduced by the brilliance of pure color. I returned from my trip with a passion for rainbow colors” (quoted in P. Schneider, Matisse, London, 2002, p. 59).
In depicting the island and its environs, Matisse was inspired by the example of two other painters who had captured the ferocious energy of Belle-Ile, with the waves crashing against its giant, jagged cliffs: Claude Monet and John Peter Russell. Monet had painted Belle-Ile in 1886, and Matisse is known to have seen those works, not least at the 1897 exhibition of the Caillebotte Bequest at the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris. As for the Australian painter Russell, he lived in Belle-Ile and Matisse stayed and painted with him on his trips there.
By the time of Matisse's final visit to the island in 1897, he was beginning to cement his individual approach to the Impressionist style and on his own path towards the avant-garde. In an impressionistic manner, Matisse captures in Paysage de Bretagne the island's atmospheric conditions through his loose and intuitive brushstrokes. Yet, this humble, rural landscape is bathed in a novel pink light, electrifying the scene and demonstrating the artist’s imaginative and emotional connection to color, a connection which would soon evolve into the wild pigments of Fauvism.