"In Kergoat a profound impression takes you entirely ..." Breton, a native of Pas-de-Calais, recounts the forgiveness he witnessed in 1890 in Quéménéven, near Locronan. Back in Paris, in his studio, he painted this great composition. It is the chapel's annual celebration, one of the largest in Cornwall. The crowd rushes to obtain absolution from sins. At the sound of the drums, the procession waits to enter through the portico. The variety of embroidered costumes amazes. Breton portrays collective piety. He details the scene: men then women with downcast faces, a multitude of lighted candles, resplendent banners, venerated statues. The red of Ploaré's robes bursts into the center of the sanctuary's greenery.

The canvas was presented at the Chicago and Paris World Expositions of 1893 and 1900. Owned by an American collector, this canvas was acquired in 1994. In addition to public subsidies, 1,177 local subscribers contributed to this purchase, a symbol of the attachment of a region to its heritage.

Like Jules Breton, the artists presented in this room mostly discovered Finistère in the second half of the 19th century. They are fascinated by the deep pity of the inhabitants. Religious life includes various themes: graces, masses, prayers… where fervor and customs compete for the limelight.

© Musée des beaux-arts de Quimper.

Brrr, death awaits ... Fear Ankou on a full moon night. In a foggy atmosphere, the trees are menacing. The ghosts of the washerwomen wave their white shrouds. From the back of the painting, they fly to the first floor to surround Wilherm Postic. It is All Saints' Day and this disbeliever has not honored his dead. Straight hair, wide open mouth, panicked, death on his left warns him "I catch and surprise". He will soon be snatched from the world of the living and lie in the thickets because the shroud does not have to be twisted in the direction of the washerwoman at the risk of having his bones broken. Yan'Dargent recalled the fantastic legends of his childhood. The theme is taken from Émile Souvestre's collection, Le Foyer breton, published in 1844.

In Finistère, the Ankou is the personification of death or its servant. He is a leading figure in the Breton oral tradition and tales.

According to the artist's wishes and according to custom, his son requested that his body be exhumed in 1907 and that his head be placed in the ossuary with his family. This is the last known head detachment in Brittany.

© Musée des beaux-arts de Quimper.

A port in the city! The "Roi des Ciels" (a nickname that Boudin had once received from Corot), offers a view of the Odet River. From the Cape Horn district it is possible to watch the calm water at high tide extending to the cathedral. This urban landscape is animated: walkers on the quays, washerwomen at work and even the ferryman waiting for the customer to pass. The painter offers traditional elements of the representation: balanced composition by trees on the sides of the curve of the quays, depth of the painting carved by the contrast of shadows and lights, play of lines of poles and arrows. . However, a new spirit emerges: the vast summer sky with fleeting atmospheric effects, reflections in the water and the fragmented touch around the boat make Boudin a forerunner of impressionism.

The Saint-Corentin cathedral is one of the favorite subjects of the painters who came to Quimper. This view from Boudin is invaluable because it is the first documenting arrow completed the previous year. Designed by Joseph Bigot, also architect of the museum opened in 1872, they are the symbol of the city.

Boudin chooses the quaint point of view par excellence to give an emblematic image of Quimper. Many artists have followed suit. Even today, this postcard representation still seduces. The scenario has changed little: a comparison to be made on the spot!

© Musée des beaux-arts de Quimper.

"Whoever sees Sein sees his end" ... On this island nicknamed "the island of the dead", a widow and her child meditate with dignity on the grave of their deceased. The young woman looks down, painfully internalizes her drama. Kneeling on the stone, the boy raises his head and looks at us sadly. Their silences oppose the din of the sparkling sea in the background. This dark mourning scene takes place in a wave washed cemetery, with no flowers or colors. Renouf spent the winter among the fishermen of this austere island located in a hostile sea. Yet this poignant scene is fictitious: the painter has chosen this abandoned place as the setting and has placed these figures that become the archetypes of the sailor's widow and orphan.

This painting, presented at the Paris Salon, brought notoriety to its author, who was awarded the second place medal. It was immediately acquired by the museum. From this work the theme of the Breton widow becomes a commonplace. In Sein, widows occupy a special place, have an almost sacred character and do not remarry.

The sea is particularly dangerous in the Raz de Sein and more generally in Brittany. Shipwrecks are common there. Breton piety is characterized by its loyalty to the dead. The widows of the sailors, dressed in black, were often represented daily in prayer at the graves of their men: fathers, husbands, children. Particularity of the Ile de Sein: after the cholera epidemic of 1886, the mourning headdress became that of everyday life.

© Musée des beaux-arts de Quimper.

The stake is raging. Saint Lucia of Syracuse is martyred under the reign of the Roman emperor Diocletian for his conversion to Christianity, his resistance irritates: a witness jumps on the pole and cuts his throat.

The bodies twist, turn over in all directions; the smoke rises in dense spirals, taking with it the vaporous fabric of the dress. The violence of the scene explodes in the effects of glimpses and perspectives, in the virtuosity and in the chromatic contrasts.

Born from the Counter-Reformation, which reaffirmed the importance of the cult of saints, Baroque art showed its splendor in religious circles. In 1621 Rubens made the ceiling for the Jesuit church in Antwerp, which was largely lost in a fire in 1718. The preparatory sketches allow us to imagine it today.

This work on wood was born from an important commission received by Rubens in 1620, in which the painter undertook to create in less than a year a series of paintings to adorn the ceiling of this church, built starting in 1615. The contract he specifies that he had to "draw the drawings of the 39 paintings in small format with his own hand, then leaving the final execution to Van Dyck and some other students" from his studio. This model, a sketch painted in oil, assumes all its value: by the hand of the master himself, he illustrates his genius and testifies to what his contemporaries called "the agility and frenzy of his brush".

© Musée des beaux-arts de Quimper.

Silence! We don't have to wake her up. She is lying naked on thick pillows, abandoned, offered to amazement. Her skin is marble white, her head and breasts are small. Her idealized body has sensual curves. It is not a woman, but a goddess we contemplate. Disturbing and perfect beauty.

But why this left hand cut at the wrist, and the legs brutally cut off at the level of the thighs? This work is the fragment of a larger composition: the agile arabesque of the undulating body of Venus on a bed covered with a flowery sheet, at the end of which two angels observed a pair of birds. In the upper right corner, a landscape gave depth to the whole. We don't know when it was reduced to this striking oval.

Why exhibit a truncated work? Dell'Abate became famous in Italy in the early 16th century for his sense of landscape, genre scenes and female types. Called to the court of the king of France in 1552, he highlights Le Primatice for the decoration of the castle of Fontainebleau. He introduced a taste for the landscape and pastoral scenes in Bellifontana art.

The theme of the sleeping Venus surrounded by loves is a classic of Renaissance art. Nicolò was able to study it in Italy and in the French royal collection. It gives it life and pulpit, with the flexibility of its brush and its pearly colors. Many of his works were destroyed or retouched in the 17th century, their voluptuous charm struck the most puritanical sensibility. This Venus is one of the rare examples of her delicate talent.

© Musée des beaux-arts de Quimper.

Imagine St. Paul in the flickering light of candles: hieratic, comes to life, becomes unreal. Her face emerges, vivid and colorful, from the gold background, divine light. Standing, facing, his figure belongs to the celestial world. The sword of his martyrdom is also the symbol of his career as a soldier. In hand, his epistles, letters addressed to the first Christian communities.

At the beginning of the Renaissance, the Sienese fourteenth century mixed influences: from the art of Byzantine mosaics for the static attitude and gaze, and from Gothic art for its ogival format or punch-worked motifs. The ground already evokes the perspective and the shadows the modeling of the body.

Painted on wood, the oldest work in the collections is a fragment of the altarpiece in the Church of San Domenico in Siena.

At the end of the 14th century, easel painting did not exist. The Church is the main artistic client. Vasari in his Lives judges Bartolo di Fredi as a "mediocre painter in his day", but he had some success and made this altarpiece. Use the gold background technique: on a support glued and then coated with a red preparation, apply gold leaves, symbols of the sacred world. This polyptych, in five panels, presented the Virgin of the Evangelists in a frame in the center. St. Paul was on his left. The few known objects are scattered in museums and collections around the world.

© Musée des beaux-arts de Quimper.

The loves of the gods are not a long quiet river! As proof, this virtuosic sketch in shades of brown presents the voluptuous abduction of Proserpina, the central figure. In dominating it, his uncle Pluto, the Roman god of the Underworld, is hit by Cupid's arrow. The god is recognizable thanks to his bident and the torch carried by the cherub. Below, the nymph Cyané watches the drama. Her inexhaustible tears are symbolized by the overturned vase.

This fiery scene draws its mythological subject from Ovid's Metamorphoses.

The oval format is typical of popular medallion subjects. Without an identifiable result, would the presence of the signature and date, rare for a sketch, make it an independent work?

Boucher, a notable French Rococo artist under Louis XV, demonstrates his mastery here, a year before his death.

Boucher's work enjoys the freedom of touch provided by the preparatory exercise. A sketch leaves room for impetuous movement and is not laden with detail. The painter applies the monochrome technique, which consists in using gradients of a single shade.

© Musée des beaux-arts de Quimper.

It's a great night in Versailles ... The views of the Petit Trianon park light up for an exceptional night. The fires of the bundles in the ditches and the lanterns hanging from the trees or hidden in the flower beds allow you to see many small silhouettes in the darkness. The crowd rushes to discover the spectacle of the rotunda of the Temple of Love, masterfully illuminated. In this rare re-enactment of this garden in eighteenth-century art, the painter plays with chiaroscuro and reflections in the water. In the garden of the Petit Trianon sumptuous parties were organized under the aegis of Marie Antoinette. Here it would have been represented none other than the reception of June 6, 1782 in honor of the Count of the North, son of Catherine II, future Paul I of Russia.

This painting illustrates Hubert Robert, the inexhaustible chronicler of the events of Parisian life: parties, urban works, fires. Today this artist, with a notable official career, is best known for his depictions of ruins with sentimental content.

© Musée des beaux-arts de Quimper.

A woman of her time. The elegant woman, sitting at home, writes to her children on the eve of the French Revolution. The beautiful stranger stares at us, still absorbed in her task. Her clothing reflects a new fashion tending towards simplicity: a pearl white frock coat, a transparent veil on the neck and the charlotte on her natural powdered hair. She embodies, in this Age of Enlightenment, the modern, liberated and cultured woman of the living room. This portrait is made by a female artist, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard. In this work he displays a prodigious ability to render materials: the reflections of the satin and the opacity of the wood of the desk covered with green felt contrast with a neutral background.

Adélaïde Labille-Guiard is one of the most famous portrait painters of the late 18th century. She is also a renowned miniaturist and pastelist after an apprenticeship with the great master Quentin de La Tour. She was admitted to the Académie de Saint-Luc, a painting academy, when she was just twenty. She then entered the Académie Royale de peinture et de sculpture at the same time as her rival Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, to whom she is often compared. He acquired his fame thanks to the portraits he made first for the daughters of Louis XV and then, after the Revolution, for those of fourteen deputies of the National Assembly, including that of Robespierre. In addition, the artist fought to improve the status of painters by creating her own art school for girls.

© Musée des beaux-arts de Quimper.

Are we exhibiting an unfinished canvas? This landscape offers a panoramic view over the Pierrefonds valley, in the Oise region. On the horizon you can see the Compiègne wood. The luminous ruins of the medieval castle dominate the composition. Corot set his easel to the side of the path to paint the landscape. The free course of painting was reproached him. The work gives the effect of a study and not of a completed work. The first floor is a solid construction and ignores the line. The earth, the grass and the figure are quickly wiped out. The second floors are more detailed: trees, fields, architecture, clouds. But everything is based on a modern use of color, with a narrow palette, at the expense of detail. Corot was one of the first to study outdoors, which is surprising for the time.

"Pleinairism" refers to the act of working outside the studio. This was made possible by the industrial invention in 1841 of colored metal hoses which avoided the need to grind and mix pigments. Very often the artist creates drawings or gouaches on site to fix motifs and lights which he then uses in the paintings in the studio.

© Musée des beaux-arts de Quimper.

State deposit in 1896, transfer of ownership from the State to the Municipality of Quimper in 2013

Quick, watch the city of Ys dive into the horizon before it disappears! Divine anger expressed itself, just like that threatening sky. Pursued in their escape by a breaking wave, King Gradlon and Saint Guénolé seem to flee from the painting, while Princess Dahut struggles for her survival. With a succession of curves and warm colors that suggest action, the artist draws the eye to the center of the canvas. The king's horse rears under the weight of the sins of the beautiful Dahut, responsible with her frivolous life for the destruction of the Breton Atlantis. The condemnation comes from the monk with the halo. What does that finger pointing to the sky invoke? Surely the voice of God ordering the king to drown his daughter.

This legend comes from the folklorist La Villemarqué's collection of folk songs Le Barzaz-Breiz.

In addressing this legend, Luminais is associated with the Celtic movement of the late 19th century. The museum also preserves the preparatory sketch of the work, of more modest size. It does not have the same evocative force as this immense painting, destined for the Salon. In Paris, within a dense exhibition, only the large formats were distinguished.

© Musée des beaux-arts de Quimper.

One of the most beautiful women in Paris is in Quimper! Marie-Thérèse de Cabarrus is 23 years old. She has just married Count Claude de Saint-Amand Matignon. The white color of the (ball?) Dress and the orange flower crown symbolize her purity and the bouquet of violets her modesty. The static half-seated posture against the armrest of the sofa, the curve of the shoulder and the purity of the face are reminiscent of Ingres' drawing (from which Chassériau was formed). The sensuality of the gaze and the parted lips testify to the influence of Delacroix. Despite his untimely death at the age of 37, Chassériau was one of the famous portrait painters of the 19th century. This portrait was bequeathed to the museum by the same model, as a sign of the couple's attachment to the region in which they spent their holidays.

Exhibited at the Salon of 1848, here is the description given by the writer Théophile Gautier, friend of the painter: "The girl dressed in an ice white silk dress with iridescent reflections, the cloak folded over her arm, is standing leaning on a quilted buttercup sofa with buttons; one hand dangles a bunch of Parma violets, the other hangs nonchalantly along the side […]; between the purple of her pearl-toothed mouth a smile explodes like lightning. "

© Musée des beaux-arts de Quimper.

Here is a woman in the odor of sanctity. Still and silent, St. Elizabeth of Hungary, canonized in the 13th century, stands out pale against a darker background composed of thin lines. The glow of rose gold illuminates it. Divine intervention! The flowers replace the loaves she distributed to the poor against her husband's advice.

After studying at the Academy, first in Vienna and then in Paris, List made friends with Gustave Klimt. In 1905 they founded the Second Viennese Secession, which rose up against a sclerotic art. His painting is also characterized by its female figures, inspired by Nordic poetry, medieval history and mythology. In 1907 he participated in the group's exhibition, for which he painted a triptych dedicated to Saint Elizabeth from which this panel is taken.

Exhibited in Vienna, the triptych was immediately dispersed. The museum retains the two side panels. The central, horizontal element is kept in another collection.

List was inspired by early Renaissance painters with his choice of tempera, a painting linked to the egg, a technique used in the creation of icons and frescoes. The use of gold also contributes to this approach, as in the works of the Sienese Bartolo di Fredi and Sano Di Pietro.

A plastic expression of symbolist literature, this painting wants to be contrary to visible reality and naturalism. Cultivate a taste for the bizarre and the mystery by appealing to the imagination. The artists of this current illustrate a lost ideal, drawing inspiration from the past, mythologies, tales and legends.

© Musée des beaux-arts de Quimper.

I will never drink your water. This small saddlebag-shaped sculpture, modeled by Paul Gauguin in 1887, does not seem to have a functional but decorative vocation. The artist had just spent his first Breton stay in Pont-Aven in 1886. On his return to Paris, while trying to renew himself and exploit his creations, he met Ernest Chaplet, one of the most creative potters of his time. He is initiated into his technique. Gauguin projects his Peruvian heritage there. The piece presented is a partially glazed ceramic with a motif decoration of young Bretons in traditional costumes. There are also geese, a recurring motif in Gauguin. The inspiration comes from notebooks made in Brittany.

More than the line of the object, the artist's interest is in the material and in its modeling. With brown sandstone, Gauguin associates a partial copper-brown varnish reminiscent of the leather saddlebags of pilgrims in Compostela. It is believed that he produced about a hundred of these pottery, of which very few have survived. There was no success. Gauguin wrote to his wife: "I make ceramic sculptures, Schuffenecker says they are masterpieces and that the creator is too, but they are probably too artistic to sell". Paul Gauguin is known for his paintings, but he is also a sculptor, engraver and has been able to multiply his artistic experiences.

© Musée des beaux-arts de Quimper.

The fire crackles, the smoke rises, flecks of complementary colors are in motion. In the center of a panoramic view, a fishing boat is stranded at low tide. Some men melt the tar to strengthen the waterproofness of the hull. The cove extends to the entrance of Pont-Aven, where on the left you can see a mill on the river and the village bell tower. The painter, in fact, expands the scene by modifying reality. To develop a flat area of vegetation, the hill becomes an overhanging mass. Maufra thus joins the Pont-Aven school through the extreme simplification of the forms and the use of the dark ring that separates them. But his art is hybrid and original: from Impressionism he retains the touch and interest in reflections on the water.

In 1888 Pont Aven was the scene of important plastic innovations. Radical simplification of forms, use of pure colors arranged on flat surfaces, extraneous to ordinary perception, abandonment of the classical framing and perspective, in a way similar to Japanese prints: all this characterizes the formal revolution that took place later and of which every artist has appropriated himself in his own way. The term "synthesis" defines this new approach which replaces observation with its recreation by the imaginary. This liberation from the academic grasp, this "right to dare anything" advocated by Gauguin, take painting to other territories, to other experiments.

© Musée des beaux-arts de Quimper.

It is a day of celebration in Perros-Guirec! Maurice Denis observes the hustle and bustle of the port. The boats are out for the regattas. Children play duck race and run away from the canvas, on the right. In the foreground, three women in costume: the artist used black surfaces to give them shape. In front of them, the mainmast, treated like a tree trunk, which crosses the canvas in its height. Its sinuous decoration responds to the arabesques on the surface of the water. These different elements testify to the influence of the art of Japanese prints in the painter's work.

Denis is part of the Nabi art movement. This current wants to free painting from realism and find in it a spiritual and sacred character.

© Musée des beaux-arts de Quimper.

In the heart of a dense forest a strange scene is portrayed: what are these three women doing with impassive gazes? They are engaged in a curious ceremony. Kneeling in the center, one of them appears to be making an offering in front of a burning flame on a rock. Could it be an altar of supernatural forms? We can see an animal asleep peacefully. The ocher green color allows it to blend in with the rest of the undergrowth. Paul Sérusier applies here the pictorial principles of synthesism, inherited from the Pont-Aven School and from Paul Gauguin. The neat trunks do not show their branches, which gives this forest a disproportionate look. The perspective was banned, as in the art of Japanese prints, which influenced Western artists.

The Nabi movement, heir to the principles of the Pont-Aven School, moves away from reality by simplifying the forms and reducing the color palette. For these artists "every work of art is a transposition, a caricature, the passionate equivalent of a sensation received". Drawing inspiration from the forest of Huelgoat, a wild region, Sérusier's art is also part of the symbolist movement: there he finds material to create a mystical and timeless work.

© Musée des beaux-arts de Quimper.

Twilight Conflagration ... Five maritime pines occupy the entire height of the canvas. I am the subject of the composition. The rest is poorly detailed, the ground in the foreground is plunged into darkness. As in the art of Japanese prints, the shapes are synthetic, there is the essential. In his Diary in 1916, Vallotton expressed himself in this way, wanting to evoke the emotion that the landscape gives him through "a few evocative features, one or two details, chosen, without superstition of exact timing or lighting".

The red of the trunks frees itself from realism as desired by the aesthetics of the Nabi group to which it belongs. Born in Switzerland, he is nicknamed "The Foreign Nabi". Painter, printmaker, magazine illustrator, he is a complete artist.

© Musée des beaux-arts de Quimper.

"Abandon all hope or you who enter". This is the warning given to us by this plaster cast by Rodin. The three men are, looking at them, all in the same depressed position: back bent, head down, one arm forward and one leg bent. How come? With the arm outstretched towards the ground, the white shadows seem to be sucked into by a dark underground force. And for good reason, they join the damned of Hell's Gate.

Part of a much more ambitious work, silhouettes dominate the composition.

The sculpture is inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy. After a work of modeling the clay, a plaster is cast, the first steps in the modeling of the sculpture before casting the bronze.

The state commissioned Rodin's Gate to Hell in 1880 to welcome visitors to the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, which the government intended to create. He had to bring together his most famous sculptures such as The Thinker or The Kiss. The work was never completed, however the artist exhibited a plaster version of it in a solo exhibition in 1900.

The Shadows entered the museum's collection in 1914, when Rodin was still alive. Forgotten in the reserves of state deposits for many years, they have deteriorated. The national inventory made it possible to rediscover the piece. In 2006 a restoration was undertaken for the work: the left arms of two figures were redone and everything was stabilized on a wooden support.

© Musée des beaux-arts de Quimper.