Painting By Désiré Lucas, The Bay Of Douarnenez

Superb and luminous oil painting on canvas by Louis-Marie Désiré-Lucas (1869-1949) He was born to a Breton father who was a Navy commissioner and a Creole mother. The family settled in Brest in 1871. In 1889, he obtained a scholarship from the city of Brest which allowed him to enter the Académie Julian, where he was a student of William Bouguereau, Tony Robert-Fleury and Jules Joseph Lefebvre. Then he was admitted to the School of Fine Arts in Paris. He began at the Salon of French Artists in 1893 with female portraits. The refusal of his Ave Maria at the Salon of 1896 discouraged him. Gustave Moreau then advises him to leave Paris and forget what he has learned. He settled in Vannes with his wife Marguerite and set out to reproduce scenes of Breton life. Bronze medal at the Universal Exhibition of 1900, he obtained a travel grant the following year and the French state bought him Bénédcité (Paris, Musée d'Orsay), then L'Homme des champs in 1903. He left Vannes for Belz, then charmed by the place, settled in 1907 at the Kerbervet manor in Ploare. Désiré-Lucas is influenced by the painting of Paul Cézanne. He works in series of paintings, painting the same subjects with different chromatic ranges depending on the state of the light. This painting representing the bay of Dournenez with the view of a village in the foreground and the sea in the background. The colors are very bright and the sky particularly well treated. large quality work, in excellent state of conservation. Signed lower left and on the back, presented in an original frame.