French Symbolist School - Mermaids In The Moonlight

Symbolist Breton school from the second half of the 19th century in the style of Yan' Dargent. This extremely rare subject of mermaids can be compared to Celtomaniac works, which, in France, endeavor to represent Breton legends. In the 19th century, Celtic mania affected all Celtic countries and mainly Scotland. In France, it is Brittany that artists fantasize about. On the fringes of the industrialized Second Empire, it offers a true nation within a nation, still preserving its language and traditions. This intact culture attracts a large number of artists in search of authenticity, such as Paul Gauguin or Paul Sérusier, who set up their easels in Pont-Aven. Brittany does not yet seduce with its coastline, but with its interior country, its forests and its timeless villages. Finistère, already considered the melting pot of this culture, becomes the El Dorado of artists fascinated by its folklore, including Yan 'Dargent becomes the leader. These painters, who can be counted on the fingers of one hand, transcribe with a brush the myths and legends of oral tradition, told in the evening, by the fire, where the golden nails of the furniture sparkle in the darkness like stars. This work is an extremely rare testimony to this micro-movement on the border of ethnography, so intimate that a single whisper could have made it disappear.