Christian De Marinitsch (1868-1954) - Young Breton On A Ponton De Moulin - Pont Aven.

Young Breton on a mill pontoon near Pont-Aven.

"Tableau de Salon". Old exhibition label N ° 1116.

Oil on canvas signed lower left.

Dimensions: 78.5 x 55.5 cm, with frame 108 x 85 cm

The young boy is leaning on the wooden pontoon overlooking a stream. His attitude gives him a certain assurance; that of someone who has already, despite his young age, experience in life. His outfit, clogs and ragged clothes testify to his social origin, it is probably his work clothes.
The realism and finesse of the touch to describe the character contrast with a more impressionistic touch to treat the landscape.
We can locate the scene in the vicinity of Pont -Aven where well before the painters, it is the mills and their astonishing concentration which made the reputation of the city. No less than 14 mills followed one another over just two kilometers along the Aven.
The work is of very good quality, it is a painting chosen by the artist to be exhibited at the Salon as indicated by the old exhibition number.

French painter born in Smyrna in Turkey, pupil of Lefebvre, Bouguereau and T. Robert-Fleury, Christian de Marinitsch discovered Brittany in 1892, going for the first time in his life to Roscoff. A little later, the artist moved to Concarneau then, before 1914, to Pont-Aven where he stayed regularly until the Second World War.