Technical information
- Title : Return to Caromb
- Date : c. 1951
- Technique : Oil on canvas
- Dimensions : 54 × 46 cm
- Location : Private collection
Biographical / historical context
The title refers to Caromb (Vaucluse), a place of emotional and working attachment for André Breuillaud.
In 1951, the artist repeatedly returns to Provençal motifs—hills, fields, Mediterranean vegetation, and village silhouettes. These returns offer opportunities to confront the experience of landscape with a more structured pictorial construction, in which the human figure and the territory respond to one another.
Formal / stylistic description
The composition combines landscape and figures within a single network of coloured planes. In the distance, the village (or a built ensemble) rises along a ridge line; in the foreground, several simplified figures are at work or in motion, captured in a gesture of labour or travel.
The fields are treated as large juxtaposed areas (ochres, greens, yellows), cut by contours that segment space like a patchwork. The silhouettes, reduced to volumes, fit into this grid: torsos and legs form diagonals that restart the movement, while the built forms in the background stabilize the whole.
The palette is warm and luminous, balanced by cooler blues and greens in the shadows.
Comparative analysis / related works
This articulation of figures and landscape relates to other Provençal works from the same period, in which Breuillaud seeks to hold together narrative and pictorial architecture.
The use of flat planes and simplified volumes brings the work close to his labour scenes (harvests, markets): the space is less a naturalistic panorama than a field of forces, organized by colour and drawing.
Justification of dating and attribution
The circa dating to 1951 is consistent with this phase of synthesis: warm palette, sharply drawn planar divisions, and figures that are schematic yet fully legible.
The signature at lower right corroborates the attribution to André Breuillaud.
Provenance / exhibitions / publications
Private collection. Provenance, exhibitions, and publications: not documented to date.
© Bruno Restout — Catalogue raisonné André Breuillaud