Technical information
- Title : Banks of the Rhône
- Date : c. 1938
- Technique : Oil on canvas
- Dimensions : 50 × 65 cm
- Location : Unknown
Biographical / historical context
This river view belongs to the group of southern landscapes André Breuillaud painted in the second half of the 1930s, a period in which he alternated Parisian subjects with open‑air motifs. He favoured broad vistas, taken from life or recomposed from studies, in which light and paint become vehicles of atmosphere rather than topographical description.
The Rhône—structuring the scene by its breadth and movement—provides fertile ground for a painting of breath and reflections, where the landscape is built through large colour fields and contrasts of temperature.
Formal / stylistic description
The composition unfolds horizontally around a wide river that crosses the scene on a gentle diagonal, separating a grassy, stony foreground from a more distant opposite bank. In the background, a chain of bluish hills closes the horizon and establishes atmospheric depth through gradations and soft blends.
The palette, dominated by muted greens, ochres and blue‑greys, is enlivened by warmer touches that pick out areas of earth and the edges of the vegetation. Trees and plant masses are handled as synthetic volumes—both supple and firm—while the water is rendered in smoother passages and coloured reworkings that suggest the current and the sky’s reflections.
The paint surface—laid in moderate impasto with visible brushstrokes—builds the relief of the ground and gives the landscape a bodily presence without undue descriptive emphasis.
Comparative analysis / related works
Through its wide framing and its search for balance between dark masses and luminous zones, the work aligns with Breuillaud’s open‑air landscapes in which the composition privileges stability and the continuity of planes rather than an accentuated perspective. Compared with the more angular and higher‑contrast landscapes he produced around 1939–1941, this canvas remains more atmospheric, with transitions of value and a construction founded on the breathing of light.
The vegetation, treated in modulated planes and simplified volumes, nevertheless anticipates a tendency toward formal synthesis that would later assert itself in more strongly constructed landscapes.
Justification of dating and attribution
The dating “c. 1938” is supported by the work’s stylistic coherence with the landscapes of the late 1930s: a palette that remains relatively naturalistic yet already simplified, atmospheric depth obtained through bluish blends, and a restrained handling of paint. The absence of a marked formal rupture, together with the calm relation to the motif, places it before the more geometrised and chromatically taut choices of 1939–1941.
Signature: the work is signed “Breuillaud” at lower left.
Image data
Document type: colour photographic reproduction.
© Bruno Restout — Catalogue raisonné André Breuillaud