AB-MP4-1955-008 — Ochre Mosaic (1955)

Technical information

Title: Ochre Mosaic
Date: 1955
Technique: Ink & watercolour on paper
Dimensions: 48 × 60 cm
Location: Private collection*

Biographical / historical context

Dated 1955, this view of Caromb belongs to a group of Provençal works in which André Breuillaud returns to the motif of the village, not to provide a topographical description, but as a pretext for an organisation of planes. Here, the artist combines an ink line—sometimes deliberately left “alive” and punctuated by runs—with watercolour washes. The use of watercolour, rarer in his work than pastel, allows for a distinctive transparency and lightness, made all the more perceptible by the extremely thin paper: colour settles in veils, diffuses, and leaves the white of the support to play an active role in the balance of the image.

Formal / stylistic description

The composition presents the village as an interlacing of volumes: roofs, façades and wall sections interlock in a mosaic of rectangles, trapezoids and triangles. A vertical bell tower, only lightly accentuated, serves as a pivot and organises the staggered recession of the lines. The ink drawing forms the framework of the image: a network of supple yet decisive lines outlines the forms, links the planes, and at times reveals small runs that punctuate the surface.

The watercolour then unfolds in transparent areas dominated by ochres, pinkish earth tones and warm greys, with cooler blue and green notes in the shadows and transitional passages. The thin paper encourages effects of diffusion and staining: the washes settle in veils, without any overload of matter, allowing the light of the support to breathe through. The whole produces a deliberately pared-down image in which the sensation of place arises less from descriptive detail than from the accuracy of the relationships between planes and tonal values.

Comparative analysis / related works

Compared with Breuillaud’s landscapes in oil or pastel—often more tactile, built up through superimpositions and rubbing—this sheet stands out for its search for “architecture”: the village is conceived as an assemblage of elementary forms, almost a mental survey of the motif. The primacy given to the ink line, followed by the wash, aligns the work with a process of constructive simplification: space is built through the cutting of planes rather than through modelling.

This economy is not an impoverishment, but a shift of register. Where pastel allows chromatic vibrations to be amplified, watercolour here seeks a more aerial and luminous effect, capable of suggesting the warmth of the walls and the dust of ochres without thickening the surface. Caromb thus becomes a synthetic motif: a town reduced to its relationships of masses while retaining an immediately legible Provençal tonality.

Justification of dating and attribution

The date “55”, written with the signature at lower left, provides a direct point of reference consistent with the overall stylistic character of the work: simplification of volumes, structuring drawing, and the use of transparent washes. The accord between the linear handling, the warm palette and the will to synthesis firmly anchors the work within Breuillaud’s Provençal corpus of the mid-1950s. The absence of an inscription on the reverse does not affect this attribution, corroborated both by the signature and by the formal characteristics of the sheet.

Provenance / exhibitions / publications

Private collection*

Public sale: Arles Enchères (Me Christelle Gouirand), 21/02/2026.