The town of Crozon, where Lebasque executed this idyllic coastal landscape, is perched on the far edge of a peninsula bearing the same name, one of several fingers of land jutting out into the Atlantic Ocean from Brittany. This far-flung region in the northwestern periphery of France was connected to Paris by railway in 1862 and held an air of mystique for Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters alike.

Claude Monet ventured to the area in 1886 to capture the drama of the sea and the dazzling quality of changing light. From the cliffs of Belle-Île, a small island southeast of Crozon, Monet completed more than three dozen canvases in one of his first large-scale serial campaigns. Two years later, Paul Gauguin escaped Parisian cosmopolitanism for Breton simplicity, establishing an artist’s colony in the inland village of Pont-Aven, where he was enraptured by the medieval culture of local peoples as he experimented with a bold new style of painting. In this picture, Lebasque focuses not on the foaming waves or rural rituals, but instead conjures an atmosphere of serenity and calm in the rolling landscape, dotted with impressionistic figures and sparse farmhouses. Using his command of a varied palette, Lebasque layers together the sea, earth and sky in an exceptionally well-balanced composition.

By the early 1920s, Lebasque was an artist in his mature period, who had absorbed a variety of artistic influences from the turn of the century and reconciled them in a distinct Post-Impressionist vocabulary of his own. In the 1890s, Lebasque not only became acquainted with Impressionist masters Pissarro and Renoir, but also emerging artists like Bonnard and Vuillard, who pioneered an Intimist style that deeply influenced the young Lebasque. In 1903, the artist participated in the inaugural Salon d’Automne, exhibiting alongside Matisse and Manguin. Lebasque followed these Fauve masters to France’s Mediterranean coast, where shimmering light and bold colors flooded his compositions, influences that are visible even in works done on Lebasque’s travels to less hospitable climates, such as the present work.