Marcel Sauvaige (1855-1927) - Fisherman By The Sea In Brittany - Oil On Canvas

Beautiful oil on canvas depicting a young fisherman on a rock by the sea in Brittany. The work is signed by Marcel Sauvaige (1855-1927) at the bottom left. It could be the area around Camaret because the painter painted this part of Brittany several times. There is a very beautiful light in this painting.

Dimensions: 51 cm x 81 cm

The painting has been cleaned.

Artist was born in Lille in 1855. His father Louis Paul Sauvaige, a student of Jean-Baptiste Corot and Charles-François Daubigny, was a marine painter and passed on his vocation to him. Marcel Sauvaige was a student of the famous painter Emmanuel Lansyer (1835 - 1893), himself a student of Gustave Courbet. A member of the French Artists since 1884, he appeared at the Salon of this group with several mentions (honorable in 1903, third class medal in 1906). Marcel Sauvaige painted mainly in Brittany, which he discovered around 1890 through the small port of Camaret in Finistère. The town then received regular visits during the summer from the "king of the skies", the painter Eugène Boudin (1824 - 1898). In 1891, Marcel Sauvaige was the first to settle there by building a house on the crest of Pen Hat overlooking the Toulinguet. His painter friend Charles Cottet (1863 - 1925) joined him there. Camaret then welcomed a varied artistic community with the theatre man André Antoine (1858 - 1943), the painter Etienne Bouillé (1858 - 1933), the writers Gustave Toudouze (1847 - 1904) and his son Georges-Gustave (1877 - 1974) but also the poet Saint-Pol Roux (1861 - 1940) with a tragic destiny. Marcel Sauvaige's painting is close to that of his friend Charles Cottet, a painting of shadows, with fragile and rare lights. The two men notably painted the port of Camaret in its last light, which can be seen in Rayons du Soir by Charles Cottet (photo below) and Le port de Camaret presented by Marcel Sauvaige at the Salon in 1903. Imbued with realism, the group that would be called "the Black Band", composed of Charles Cottet, Lucien Simon, André Dauchez and René Ménard, painted a dark and melancholic Brittany, the opposite of the light painting of the Impressionists and the Nabis. The subjects revolved around the lives of fishermen and the harshness of their existence. Charles Cottet bore witness to this during his stay in Ouessant by painting poignant intimate scenes. The strong devotion reigning in these lands of Brittany was then a widely illustrated theme.