View of Caromb (c. 1940)

Technical information

• Title : View of Caromb
• Date : c. 1940
• Technique : Oil on canvas
• Dimensions : 54 × 65 cm
• Location : Private collection *

Biographical / historical context

This landscape belongs to the series of southern views executed around 1940, at a moment when the artist narrowed his practice to nearby, readily available motifs. The explicit mention of the toponym Caromb signals a particular attention to local anchoring: this is not a generic setting, but an identified village, seen from its outskirts.

In these years, landscape becomes a stable field of observation, in which the experience of place takes precedence over event. Breuillaud develops a painting of synthesis, attentive to the structure of volumes, the breathing of planes, and the way light organises architecture and vegetation.

Formal / stylistic description

The composition first establishes a foreground of warm earth—ochre and reddish—worked in broad strokes that suggest paths or striations in the ground. A belt of vegetation—olive trees and shrubby masses—occupies the middle of the canvas: foliage, treated in muted greens with thick touches, forms an irregular band that guides the eye toward the village.

Caromb appears on a rise, built in simplified light blocks with almost geometric façades. The whites and beiges of the houses stand out against a darkened, taut sky, where bluish greys and subdued tones suggest overcast weather or late-day light. The whole is animated by a nervous but controlled handling: the brush remains visible, without seeking finish, and privileges overall cohesion over minute description.

Comparative analysis / related works

The painting belongs to a group of Provençal landscapes in which Breuillaud repeatedly combines a band of vegetation in the foreground with a built line above, as if the village were emerging from a screen of trees. This manner of constructing the motif through strata rather than detailed perspective is characteristic of his mature phase: space is built through coloured planes, not through strict preliminary drawing.

A contrast frequently found in these years between the warmth of the earth and the coolness of the greens is also present here, reinforced by the density of the sky. Compared with more open and luminous views of the same vein, this canvas heightens atmospheric tension: the dark mass of sky lends the village an almost sculptural presence, as if illuminated by a reserve of light.

Justification of dating and attribution

The dating to around 1940 is consistent with the formal and chromatic synthesis observed: architecture reduced to light volumes, vegetation handled in thick touches and compact masses, and the landscape organised through broad horizontal strata. These features correspond to a period in which the artist privileged overall construction and the stability of the motif.

The palette—red ochres, subdued greens and bluish greys—together with the very direct relationship to the ground (a broadly brushed foreground, without picturesque effect) accords with the landscapes of the late 1930s and the very beginning of the 1940s, where an economy of means serves a structural reading of the site.

Provenance / exhibitions / publications

Private collection.