Victor Protais (1870-1905) Seaside In The Var Around La Seyne Sur Mer

The peaceful atmosphere of a seaside in the Var in the 19th century by the artist born in Besançon but from Toulon by adoption Victor Protais. The work in good condition is offered in a pretty 19th century gilt frame of the Barbizon type which measures 58 cm by 77 cm and 41 cm by 61 cm for the canvas alone. It represents a fisherman in his moored boat working on his nets, in the distance boats pulled ashore on rails, certainly at the beach of La Verne where these practices are usual, in the background the cliffs of Cap Brun de Toulon, and in the distance the Porquerolles Islands. Talented painter and caricaturist in his spare time, prolific in his works (especially landscapes and seascapes which adorned most Toulon establishments including the Rotonde, the Alsatian tavern, the café du commerce, the Pousset brewery and other howlers in the city), Having attended the School of Fine Arts in Lyon, Victor Girard dit Protais, born in Besançon, was a well-known artist in the region. With his look of a bohemian, carefree, witty dandy, his eternal velvet suit, his shaggy hair, Protais was a colorful character, "with populist verve"... and renowned for his notorious intemperance. He lived in the Hermitte countryside in the alley of Mar Vivo at n°17, a small house with an arbor and a garden, (sometimes called the Protais bastide). In the 1901 census, he was noted as a 31-year-old painter, she was a 52-year-old pensioner, his "guest"... He lived as a husband at 17, rue l'Abbé Vicard with Fernande, seven years his senior, (42 years at the material time) born in Cherbourg, whose real name was Louise Marie Briard. For ten years they had wandered around Algeria, Tunisia and all along the Mediterranean coast. Fernande from the age of 17 had led "a gallant life" in Paris, from lovers to lovers, from naval officer to naval officer, before falling in love with this young 25-year-old artist when she was 32… The entire neighborhood of this quiet neighborhood suffered from the couple's nocturnal and drunken arguments which ended most of the time in fistfights, frequently punctuated by gunshots and then reconciliations, until the famous evening of the drama, October 19 1905 when Protais was shot dead with a revolver in the chest by his mistress, after he had manipulated a sword taken out of a panoply and lacerated the portraits he had painted of his muse… Disturbing detail, a few hours before passing from life to death, Victor was drawing a decorative panel for a tomb, joking that it would not be his. No religious funeral according to the Protestant rite as his brother-in-law would have wished, but a civil burial, the procession made up of two funeral sheets from the Free Thought escorting the hearse, the coffin covered with a white sheet lined with red, without flowers or crowns, followed by a considerable crowd including all the Seynois and Toulon Freemasons. It should be noted that four subscriptions were raised to pay for this burial as well as the land which accommodated the mortal remains of the young painter. The trial of Louise Marie Briard was held on February 2, 1906 at the Assize Court of Var. It was the court-appointed lawyer, Maître Gouzian, who had to defend the accused, a brilliant argument in which the reasons for the dispute were evoked in turn, sometimes relating to the dogs of the house, the soup for supper, and even a more serious dispute, Protais having supported this thesis unacceptable for Fernande that Jesus would have been more socialist than Jaurès. A fight had ensued, a scuffle during which she would have tried to snatch from Victor's hands the pistol with which he was threatening her, the shot had gone off by itself, the details of this scuffle having completely slipped from the memory of the woman. poor thing (fortunately because this hypothesis was totally ruled out by the medical examiner who claimed that the bullet had been fired from afar, but "Planète Justice" was not yet broadcasting its investigations). The argument developed by Master Gouzian was that "this poor tearful widow whom you have before you on this bench of infamy", admittedly a former demi-mondaine but who had abandoned the easy life, the luxury and the pleasures of Parisian life by love for this impoverished bohemian could not have intentionally killed the one she loved… Louise Marie Briand, known as Fernande, was therefore acquitted. There remain a few paintings by Protais, imbued with a luminous and serene atmosphere, like this one.