Technical information
- Title : Portrait of Hélène
- Date : c. 1929
- Technique : Oil on canvas
- Dimensions : Unknown
- Location : Private collection
Biographical / historical context
This portrait holds a singular place in André Breuillaud’s career: Hélène would become his second wife, giving the work an intimate dimension while situating it at a crucial moment in the artist’s stylistic development.
Around 1929, Breuillaud stood on the threshold between the ZM phase (1925–1929), marked by social margins and portraits of the Zone, and a more inward-looking portrait practice, in which human presence calms without losing intensity. The canvas belongs to these transitional works: less dramatic than the social portraits of 1927–1928, yet still carried by dense paint and a commitment to direct truth.
Formal / stylistic description
The first impression is the force of the gaze: two green eyes, slightly asymmetrical, look at the viewer with an anxious lucidity. This frontal confrontation is nuanced by a discreet tilt of the head, creating a contained tension and giving the portrait its psychological vibration.
The face is built with a thick yet subtle paint layer typical of late ZM: volumes modelled through an alternation of warm and cool tones, flesh moving from red-browns to rosy greys and pale ochres, producing a living, pulsating effect. Short hair, painted in small, dense brown touches, anchors the figure in the aesthetics of the years 1925–1930. The garment—a light blouse—is handled in soft impastos, its folds suggested rather than detailed: finish is decisively concentrated on the face and the gaze.
The background, worked in rubbed passages and spirals of ochres and greys, creates a shifting halo around the head, isolating the figure in an almost abstract atmosphere. This vibration amplifies the sitter’s inner presence and thickens the portrait’s silence.
Comparative analysis / related works
Compared with the darkest and most violent ZM portraits, the painting operates with a calmer economy: it retains the density of matter but shifts the focus from social charge to psychology. It thus differs from Le Bicot de la Zone (1928), rougher and more tragic, while sharing with it the same will toward frontal presence.
Set against earlier female portraits, the work appears more constructed and concentrated: far from the transparency of the 1927 watercolours, it asserts a pictorial truth grounded in modelling and the centrality of the gaze. Through this economy of means and the importance accorded to inner tension, it also anticipates certain portraits of the early 1930s.
Justification of dating
The circa dating to 1929 is consistent with all formal indicators: paint still thick and sombre, but a more quietly psychologised face; a hairstyle typical of the late 1920s; a tightened pictorial construction and a rubbed background characteristic of transitional works. No stylistic element contradicts this attribution.
Provenance / exhibitions / publications
Private family collection.