Lot Essay
'Among his paintings of local character can be included the Brittany subjects of his earlier days and the Dutch motives which have engaged so much of his attention from 1880 onwards. In Brittany he found material for many sympathetic pictures of peasant life, for parallels to his studies of the hard struggles to which the New England settlers were subjected. How well he understood the primitive simplicity of the people and the pastoral quiet of the country is well seen in his 'Breton Peasants going to Market on Christmas Morning', his 'Breton Pastoral', his 'Wayside Devotion', and even in such a suggestion of faith that dominates the simple peasant's mind as 'The Vision at the Martyr's Well' (p. 25). Of the many artists who have painted Brittany and the Breton peole, few have entered so immediately into the spirit of that quiet district'.