Painting By Felix Pescador-saldaña - Breton Women In Front Of The Cross

Félix PESCADOR Y SALDAÑA (Zaragoza 1836 - 1921?) Breton women before the cross oil on canvas 65 x 81 cm signed 'F. Pescador' lower left Félix Pescador y Saldaña was born in 1836 into a family of artists. His father, Mariano Pescador y Escárate, was a professor at the School of Fine Arts in Zaragoza, as was one of his brothers later. The latter was one of the pioneers of photography in Spain. Our artist trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zaragoza and Madrid, then moved to Paris and became a student of Léon Bonnat. He exhibited his works at the Salon des Artistes Français between 1876 and 1900, where he notably presented his portrait commissions, a field in which he excelled. In 1887, his painting The Soldier's Dream, now in the Cognac Museum, received critical acclaim in Paris. The work we are presenting was certainly executed in 1892, the year he exhibited Breton Interior at the Salon. Félix Pescador seems to have experienced the same enthusiasm for Brittany as his colleagues. This unique region, whose beauty and very strong identity fascinate, invites many artists to draw inspiration from it. Brittany became a place of artistic pilgrimage at the end of the 19th century, notably for the pioneer Paul Gauguin, but also Henri Rivière, Maurice Denis, Georges Lacombe, Albert Clouard and André Dauchez. At the bend in a dirt road delimited by high embankments, two peasant women are praying before a granite cross. The older of the two, sitting on her wheelbarrow, gazes intensely at it while the younger is kneeling and seems absorbed in her prayer. Dressed in the peasant fashion of the time, they turn their backs on us to face the divine. Through this ethnographic painting, Félix Pescador tends to highlight the particular importance that the Catholic religion occupies in Brittany, regardless of age or social class. We can compare this work to the works of Fernand Le Goût-Gérard, whose main goal was to represent the traditional life of the region through scenes of people returning from fishing or from village towns.