EDGARD MAXENCE | JEUNE FEMME À LA COIFFE DEVANT LA MER

Monsieur Touraille (according to an inscription on the reverse) 

Cyrille Sciama, Edgard Maxence: les dernières fleures du symbolisme, exh. cat., Musée de Beaux-Arts, Nantes; Musée de la Chartreuse, Douai, May 21, 2010-January 17, 2011, pp. 35, 78

A student of Gustave Moreau, Edgard Maxence was a leading French Symbolist painter. As a native of Nantes in northern France, it was his intense affinity for his homeland of Brittany and the historic Pays de Retz, between the southern bank of the Loire and the Breton marshlands, whose customs and costumes were frozen in time, that provided him with countless sources of inspiration. The artist combined Medieval costume and Breton ritual in compositions that were often shrouded in mystery. In Jeune femme à la coiffe devant la mer, the sitter wears a headdress that was typical of the Pays de Retz in the nineteenth century but also recalls headdresses worn by French aristocrats in the fifteenth century. The seaside setting is Bernière-en-Retz, where the artist had a villa and studio.