Provençal Landscape

Technical information

Title : Provençal Landscape
Date : c. 1950
Technique : Oil on canvas
Dimensions : 50 × 73 cm
Location : Private collection

Biographical / historical context

Around 1950, Breuillaud enters what can be described as a form of “Provençal proto-Cubism”: a landscape rebuilt through modular plates, in which direct observation is recomposed into chromatic architecture.

The surroundings of Caromb, Le Barroux and Beaumes-de-Venise then constitute a visual laboratory. The artist tests a language based on diagonals, interlocking planes, and the tension between warm and cool masses.

This canvas belongs to the founding core of the PR2 segment: the subject remains legible, but polyhedral construction asserts itself as the dominant principle.

Formal / stylistic description

The composition is organised as a succession of tilted planes—yellows, oranges, greens and reds—fitted together like slabs. The olive trees in the foreground are reduced to geometrised, almost sculptural volumes, whose trunks cut across the scene in obliques.

The village is suggested by a few light blocks placed at the centre as an anchoring point, while the rear hillside unfolds in large angular swathes (browns, violets, muted greens).

Light is rendered through value contrasts and shifts of hue rather than through gradients: the painting privileges an “organised shattering” in the service of firm construction.

Comparative analysis / related works

The work is close to PR2-1950-003 in its assertion of facets and the vigour of its warm accords, yet it remains more open and more readily legible in the distribution of planes.

In terms of its degree of geometricisation, it stands between PR2-1950-001 (more atmospheric) and compositions where fragmentation densifies into a true mosaic (PR2-1950-004).

It foreshadows the cycle of landscapes and scenes around the olive harvest, in which Breuillaud will push further the modular logic and chromatic saturation.

Justification of dating and attribution

The still-regular segmentation, a palette dominated by ochres and oranges, and a structure built on crossed diagonals logically place the painting around 1950, before the later accentuation of breaks and dislocations.

The attribution to André Breuillaud is confirmed by the correspondence of these procedures (interlocking planes, geometrised olive trees, shadows rendered through chromatic fractures) with other documented PR2 landscapes from the same period.

Provenance / exhibitions / publications

Private collection.