JULES BRETON | La Falaise

Goupil & Cie, Paris, no. 10686 (acquired in November 1875) 
Samuel P. Avery, Jr., New York (acquired from the above through George A. Lucas, April 1876, as Looking out to Sea)
Gov. Royal Chapin Taft, Providence, Rhode Island (acquired from the above and sold, his estate, American Art Association, New York, February 3, 1921, lot 65, illustrated, as The Lookout)
Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge, Madison, New Jersey (acquired at the above sale and sold, her estate, Sotheby Parke-Bernet, New York, May 14, 1976, lot 35, illustrated, as Lookout)
Private Collection, Florida (by 1994) 
Acquired in 1994 

Providence, Rhode Island, Providence Art Club, Member's Loan Exhibition of Paintings and Watercolors, February 18-March 4, 1886, no. 14 (lent by Royal C. Taft) 

Edward Strahan, ed., The Art Treasures of America, Philadelphia, [1879-1882], facsimile edition, 1977, vol. III, pp. 90, 94 
Annette Bourrut Lacouture, Jules Breton: Painter of Peasant Life, exh. cat., Musée des beaux-arts, Arras; Musée des beaux-arts, Quimper; National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, March 16-December 15, 2002, pp. 152, 198, illustrated p. 155, fig. 123 

The following condition report was kindly provided by Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.: This work is lined with wax, which can easily be reversed. The lining does support the work well. The paint layer is cleaned, varnished and retouched. Under ultraviolet light, one can see remnants of old varnish here and there in the darker colors. The only retouches in the sky are in the upper left, in the center addressing slight thinness, and a few spots on the right edge. In the land on the other side of the bay, there are a few areas of retouching addressing some thinness. There is very little retouching in the water. There is none on the right side including the sandy beach, and there are only a few on the left side of the water above the legs of the figure. In the darker colors, there are a few spots of retouching in the legs of the figure, and in her waist and back. There are a few spots in the lower left corner which do not interfere with the signature, and a few other isolated retouches in the rocks in front of the figure and on which she reclines in the lower center. The retouches to the darker colors are not unexpected given the delicacy of the paint layer in these areas. The retouches are well applied, and the work can be hung as is.
"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."

Jules Breton visited Brittany for the first time in 1865, staying in and around the Baie de Douarnenez, one of throngs of travelers to France’s northwestern province, curious to experience firsthand its distinct region and its people who held firmly to the language, religion and cultural traditions of their sixth century Celtic ancestors.  The artist was immediately captivated by the area's sandy beaches, rocky coastline, and the ever-changing Atlantic sweeping across the bays– the shifting blue-green of summer waters are evocatively captured in his luminous composition of his wife Élodie with a sunshade, Baie de Douarnenez (1871, Collection of Eckhart and Ischi Grohmann, fig. 1) and the murky waves and white foam of stormy seas (Bourrut Lacouture p. 137-142). Equally compelling were the Bretons who lived by the water, and the artist observed washerwomen and other hard working peasants, recording their daily tasks in classically inspired arrangements such as The Washerwomen of the Breton Coast (1870, Grohmann Museum, Milwaukee). Soon after these first works in Brittany, Breton would sharpen his focus to a single figure absorbed in a task or moment of reflection, naturalistically painted against the sea on a large scale, in compositions such as Young Woman Spinning (1872, Denison Museum, Grainville, Ohio, fig. 2), his enigmatic La Falaise of 1874, exhibited at that year's Salon (Private Collection) and the present work, its evocative replica. Upon exhibition, La Falaise, like many of Breton’s figural experiments, invited allegorical interpretation. In particular, some Salon visitors attempted to find a patriotic allegory in the artist’s work painted following the 1870 defeat of France during the Franco-Prussian war. Breton, the proclaimed "painter of peasants," actively refused these associations, as evidenced by his response to the critic of Le Français who "in a political article compared France waiting for her King to my Breton woman waiting for her boat!" insisting that with La Falaise "this is not what I was trying to depict" (as quoted in Bourrut Lacouture, p. 151). Rather than a response to current politics, Breton’s focus on the women of Brittany was an important visualization and recognition of the people and the land that he loved.  The power of this personal response is keenly felt in the Salon's La Falaise and the present work, with its girl in rustic Breton costume seen in dramatic foreshortening, lying flat against a high-jutting cliff, her distaff forgotten as she gazes at the sea. While the replica is of a smaller scale than the Salon version, the impact is no less powerful, particularly as Breton employs his broadly painted, vigorous naturalistic (almost photorealistic) technique (Bourrut Lacouture, p. 198).  

Facing away from the viewer, the Breton girl of La Falaise invited a shared contemplation of the waves and, upon viewing the Salon version, compelled the late nineteenth century avant-garde critic Jules-Antoine Castagnary (supporter of Gustave Courbet and defender of Naturalism), who in the past had found Breton’s peasants somewhat dull, to develop an entire narrative for the youth wandering the coast, accompanied only by the whistling winds and gulls as she contemplates the “void” (as translated, Jules-Antoine Castagnary, Salons (1857-1870), Paris, 1892, vol. 2, p. 110).  As with many critics, Castagnary was entranced by the artist’s lack of narrative impulse, believing Breton did not want “to limit our thought by linking it to the thought” of his painted figure, and in his naturalistic depiction of the seas allowed the “blow” of “an invigorating burst of salt air, to remind… that more than once you have been overwhelmed by contemplation, of infinity” (Castagnary, p. 110, 111). Fellow critic Duvergier de Hauranne compared the Breton girl to the monumental Sphinx of Egypt staring off across the desert, believing she, "like it," "is the only actor in the scene and she is part of nature, whose eternal mystery she seems to examine" (Ernst Duvergier de Hauranne, "Le Salon de 1874," Revue des deux mondes, vol. 3, June 1, 1874, p. 621, as translated and quoted in Jules Breton and the French Rural Tradition, exh. cat., 1982, p. 92).  Indeed, as with so many of Breton’s greatest works, the “humble” model against nature was precisely what gave the painting its power. As one writer explained: "Let us not suppose that sentiment and poetic feeling are monopolized by people of education and refinement…often when brought face to face with the beautiful and the sublime in nature, a peasant’s soul is thrilled with the mingled feelings of tenderness and awe" and likewise the viewer "as we gaze from this high eminence upon the apparently infinite ocean we are filled with a sense of its awful grandeur, and are disposed to reveries that come to us only in presence of this sublime spectacle" (Armand Silvestre, "The Cliff," The Gallery of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, 1884, p. 71).

The Salon version of La Falaise would soon be sold by Goupil (and as recorded in his letter to his brother Theo, eagerly anticipated by Vincent van Gogh in his brief stint working for the firm).  It is unknown exactly why the artist chose to paint a smaller version, though it may have been prompted by the warm response to the original. Upon viewing the Salon version, the writer George Defour applauded its profound realism and rustic subject yet bemoaned its scale which he believed required the use of the opposite side of a telescope to fully appreciate its subject, wishing the artist could paint such powerful works on a smaller, easier to live with size (as translated, George Defour, Des Beaux-Arts dans la politique, Paris, 1876, p. 207).  And while the replica is nearly entirely faithful to the Salon version, the inclusion of white sails on the horizon is a further reminder that Breton avoided allegorical meaning in his work, and insisted La Falaise's subject was simply a girl waiting for a sailor (Bourrut Lacouture, p. 152).

No matter the motivation, soon after it was painted, the self-taught historian of American art collections and early arbiter of taste, Edward Strahan (the pseudonym for Earl Shinn) discovered Breton’s “important Lookout” in the home of Gov. Royal Chapin Taft, Sr. (1823-1912) in “the rich city of Providence” (Strahan, p. 90).  Taft’s wealth and reputation came from his work in the wool trade, in banking, and as director of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, and he was the 39th Governor of Rhode Island.  A patron of the arts, Taft also served as the president of the Rhode Island School of Design and member of the Providence Art Club, where the present work was exhibited in 1888.  As with so many other new collectors of the era, Taft worked with the preeminent art agent Samuel P. Avery, who was largely responsible for developing Breton’s reputation in America, acquiring La Falaise in 1876, hanging it among works by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Narcisse Diaz de la Peña, Henri-Joseph Harpignies, and Adolf Schreyer. After Taft’s death, a number of works from his collection were sold by his estate at auction in 1921 where La Falaise was acquired by Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge (1882-1973). The youngest child of William Avery Rockefeller, Jr., brother to John D. Rockefeller, Geraldine brought $101 million into her 1907 marriage to Marcellus Hartley Dodge Sr.  Rockefeller Dodge developed an impressive art collection, including works by William Bouguereau, Daniel Ridgway Knight, and a number of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century’s best animal painters (many of which, like the present work, were sold in these rooms in 1976).  She is best remembered for her wide-ranging philanthropy, and her love and devotion to dogs (she served as the first woman judge for the Westminster Kennel Club) and her commitment to protecting and caring for strays, founding St. Hubert's Giralda animal rescue organization in 1939.



We would like to thank Annette Bourrut Lacouture for confirming the authenticity of this lot, which will be included in her forthcoming catalogue raisonné on the artist.