Provençal Landscape (c. 1940)

Technical information

• Title : Provençal Landscape
• Date : c. 1940
• Technique : Oil on canvas
• Dimensions : 46 × 55 cm
• Location : Private collection *

Biographical / historical context

This panoramic view belongs to the southern landscapes produced around 1940, when Breuillaud developed an increasingly synthetic language. The motif arises from a serial practice in which the artist observes—at varying distances—the alternation of cultivated areas, villages perched on ridges, and the structuring presence of lines of trees.

In this context, the landscape is not treated as a simple transcription of reality, but as an ordering. Breuillaud privileges the idea of a territory shaped by human activity (plots, paths, planting lines) and by nature (reliefs, wooded masses), while retaining a vibrant sensitivity to light.

Formal / stylistic description

The composition is organised in horizontal registers: in the foreground, a row of olive trees with reddish-brown trunks and green foliage occupies the lower edge of the canvas like a rhythmic curtain. Beyond, fields unfold in successive bands of ochres, yellows and greens, with textural variations suggesting ploughed land, fallow ground or crops.

On the horizon line, a pale built ensemble stands out: it is not detailed, but placed in luminous touches, like a distant architectural marker. The sky, a cool blue with slight nuances, is handled in broad sweeps that unify the scene. The brushwork remains visible—often short and oblique—giving the landscape a continuous vibration without breaking the legibility of the planes.

Comparative analysis / related works

This painting extends a typology of landscapes in which the olive tree becomes a rhythmic motif, acting as punctuation within space. The elevated viewpoint and wide framing bring the work close to the “terroir” views Breuillaud favoured: landscapes that are not spectacular, but articulated, where one can read the logic of fields and reliefs.

The presence of a village or group of buildings on the ridge serves as a counterpoint to the vegetal foreground. This opposition between tactile proximity (trees, earth) and luminous distance (architecture) is a constant in his Provençal corpus. Here it is accompanied by a strongly dominant warm range, balanced by the sky and a few cooled greens, reinforcing the impression of space and depth.

Justification of dating and attribution

The dating to around 1940 is justified by the degree of formal simplification and by the use of a palette structured into broad accords: orange earths, muted greens, softened blues. Space is constructed through modulated planes of colour and a clearly visible brush, with no pursuit of detail—features that correspond to the mature landscapes of the period.

The treatment of distant architecture in small light touches, without linear drawing, and the use of the olive trees as a rhythmic frieze in the foreground accord with compositions produced around the turn of the late 1930s and early 1940s, when the artist emphasised overall structure and chromatic coherence.

Provenance / exhibitions / publications

Private collection.