Paul Pascal - Kersaint Bay

Paul PASCAL Melun, 1867 - Paris, 1945 Oil on panel 24 x 33 cm (30 x 39 cm with the frame) Signed lower left "P. Pascal" Provenance: artist's studio (sale on March 7, 1946 in Drouot ), Parisian private collection Student of Albert Maignan, Paul Pascal was a painter of genre, animated landscapes as well as seascapes. He painted Finistère and Cornouaille (Douarnenez, Concarneau, Pont-Aven, Morgat, Sainte-Anne-La-Palud…). He appeared at the Salon des Artistes Français from 1894 to 1939. Our painting is a view of Kersaint beach near Landunvez. A couple is present in the foreground, a man seated and a woman from behind. They seem to be resting or waiting to return home, after a day collecting seaweed. Kersaint is the land of Abers and the coast of legends. It is said that Saint Haude, sister of Saint Tanguy, is buried in Landunvez, and that her tomb is in great veneration there. This town is enriched by sea fertilizers. In the 19th century, more than 2,000 cubic meters of kelp were harvested there each year. Maurice Guillemot in his book Villégiatures d'artistes speaks of Kersaint in these terms in 1897: “It is further than Brest, all over there at the end of France, an unknown village where, under the care of an old man. castle dismantled, horses live in freedom in meadows; the inhabitants, who do not speak French, are of a race of sailors, and, like those on the other side in England, have this passion, drunkenness; they get terribly drunk on wood spirits sold in ports by Germans; nevertheless gentle, inoffensive, rustic beings, peasants from Millet, transplanted to the edge of the ocean. "