Pierre-marie Beyle - Portrait Of A Fisherwoman

Pierre Marie BEYLE Lyon, 1837 – Chennevières-sur-Marne, 1902 Oil on wood panel 33 x 25 cm (43 x 35 cm with the frame) Signed lower right “Beyle” Beautiful 19th century gilded wood frame decorated with flowers and twisted ribbons Pierre-Marie Beyle is an academic painter who focused on depicting the life of sailors on the seaside in Normandy in the 1880s in the Yport region, between Fécamp and Etretat, where Beyle spent his summers. Two of his masterpieces, the paintings exhibited at the Salons of 1884 and 1885 can be seen at the Musée des Pêcheries in Fécamp “Les Brûleuses de varech” and “La Mauvaise Nouvelle”. Beyle notably produced many portraits of fisherwomen. One of the interests of these portraits is the variety of clothing worn by these women. His paintings are as many varied portraits of fisherwomen with the different costumes worn at the time in the Yport region. In our painting, the fisherwoman is wearing a long skirt, dark socks, a top with straps and a red scarf. This portrait is reminiscent of the one painted by the same painter and auctioned at Christie's on October 27, 1998 in Amsterdam ("The Young Fisherwoman") with the same skirt, the same small scarf and the same black socks. But an originality of our painting is that the fisherwoman here is not wearing a landing net as in most of the portraits made by Beyle but a net with two sticks. Shellfish fishing on the beach was done using a landing net or a net carried at arm's length by two sticks. This portable net can be found, for example, in the "Portrait of a Sailor" on the Beach painted by Eugène Chigot in 1887 and preserved at the Touquet Museum, or in the "Return of the Fisherman" near Honfleur by Adolphe Cals (George Viau Collection). In addition, the attitude of the woman in our portrait is very beautiful, her head three-quarters towards the sea. This attitude can be found in a beautiful painting by Beyle sold at Christie's on October 24, 2006 ("The Pretty Shellfish Fisherwomen"), with a similar garment, moreover, apart from the scarf.