Edouard Rosset-granger - Souvenir De Bretagne

Souvenir de Bretagne
1919-1920
Gouache on paper
54×38 cm
Signed “E. Rosset-Granger” lower left

Trained at the School of Fine Arts, Édouard Rosset-Granger was admitted to the Salon from 1878. He exhibited from 1881 to 1889 with the Society of French Artists, before joining, from its creation in 1890, the National Society of Fine Arts.
This gouache is one of the works he exhibited at the Salon of the National Society of Fine Arts in 1920, under the title Souvenir de Bretagne, which is also the one under which it is presented at the International Exhibition of Monte-Carlo, as evidenced by the exhibition label stuck on the back.
The work was executed in a fairly academic manner, with the help of preparatory studies, as revealed by two sketches preserved in a notebook dating from 1919, made during a summer stay in Finistère and representing the Calvary of Carantec and the Duons plateau[1]. The artist then freely juxtaposed these two motifs to create the frame of a Breton devotional scene, depicting a woman praying at the calvary in the light of the moon, her child at her side, the sea in the background. If the sea and the sky seem lenient, this prayer in the middle of the night testifies to the dangers of the sea and the anguish of the fishermen's wives waiting for the return of their husbands' boats.

Provenance: Sale of the artist's studio, June 17, 1942, n°55

[1] These sketches are reproduced on the website dedicated to this artist: https://rossetgranger.wordpress.com/2016/10/11 /sketchbooks-dedouard-rosset-granger-1878-1879-1912-and-1917-1919/