Charles Cottet, Brittany, 1908

"Pain in the Land of the Sea", 1908. Large color etching (47.3 x 62.2cm), signed lower right, and numbered 14. One of the rare 10 proofs containing two small original pencil drawings, noted at the bottom of the proof. Engraving referenced in the catalogue raisonné of the artist's engraved work by Daniel Morane, under number 43. Framed piece. This composition was created by the artist in an oil on canvas currently in the collections of the Musée d'Orsay. "Using a composition where geometry is extremely present, he transforms his subject, the return of the body of a drowned man to the port of the island of Sein, into a universal event. We find there the eternal renewal of the death of Christ, mourned by four women in timeless dark costumes, substitutes for the Virgin and the Holy Women. The religious reference does not stop at the evangelical allusion. In the frieze arrangement of the figures, it also refers to the wood or stone sculptures of the Gothic period, during which religious fervor was intense. If emotion and ostentatious pain distinguish the women in the center, resignation seems to prevail among the surrounding crowd, while the surrounding decor, an interweaving of facets of luminous colors, evokes an eternity greater than what can only be a brief passage on earth." Description from the Musée d'Orsay.