The following condition report was kindly provided by Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.:
This work is in very good condition. The painting has been cleaned. It has a wax lining which is easily reversible. There is no apparent damage or abrasion to the paint layer. There are some small spots of darkness in the cats in the lower left under ultraviolet light. These do not correspond to retouches and neither do any of the other dark marks visible under ultraviolet light in other areas. The slight thinness to the clothing of the women in the center of the picture is intentional.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."
In August 1881, Jules Breton’s wife, Élodie, referred to her husband’s newly-completed oil sketch as “l’esquisse de hameau Breton avec figures,” which Annette Bourrut Lacouture has identified as the present work. Breton’s
esquisse captures the evening’s purple-blue darkening sky, the emerging moonlight casting shadows over villagers gathering after a day’s work in Finistère along the Brittany coast. As Breton explained, the region “profoundly struck” him after repeat visits, during which he experienced “all its aspects, maritime, rural, and religious” (Jules Breton,
The Life of the Artist, trans. Mary J. Serrano, New York, 1902, p. 308). The present work and additional sketches artfully recorded Breton’s impressions of the land and its people, and were essential for the completion of
Le soir dans les hameaux du Finistère, his major
Salon submission of 1882 (now held by The Paine Art Center and Gardens, Oshkosh, Wisconsin). Immediately upon exhibition, the painting attracted great acclaim, with the critic Théodore Veron applauding its “realism full of local poetry and mystical reverie” (as quoted in Hollister Sturges,
Jules Breton and the French Rural Tradition, exh. cat., Omaha, 1983, p. 96). Though painted six months before the
Salon composition, the present work inspires the same quiet contemplation, its composition remarkably prescient of the finished work while unique in its freer handling of paint, impressionistic lightness of touch, and deep color palette that evokes the cooling, more relaxed evening hour. This painting evidences Breton’s technique and easily stands alone as a work of art by a man who so sensitively understood the land and its people; indeed, Breton was so pleased with this preparatory work that he signed it.
The Salon version of Le Soir dans les hameaux du Finistère was quickly acquired by Breton's powerful dealer Samuel P. Avery for the collection of George I. Seney (1826-1893), the wealthy president of Metropolitan Bank of New York and railroad financier (see lots 38 and 41). It is possible that Avery also influenced Harris C. Fahnestock (1835-1914) to add the present work to his significant art collection, which also included Breton’s Cribleuse de Colza of 1886 (acquired from the artist that year by Avery and most recently sold in these rooms on October 24, 2006, lot 158 for $464,000). Like Seney, Fahnestock was a successful banker, a founding member of New York’s First National bank, and a trustee of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. While Fahnestock gifted his James Abbott McNeill Whistler painting, Nocturne in Green and Gold, to the museum in 1906, the present work was passed on to following generations of the family. Save for Élodie’s written clue of 1881, this important early version of Le soir dans les hameaux du Finistère has been untraced for well over a century.
