54
Some of Walter Osborne’s most memorable pictures were paint-
ed in Brittany. He spent the spring of 1883 at Dinan, summer at
Pont-Aven and autumn at Quimperlé, painting scenes of Breton
life in a naturalistic manner, and also taking photographs. Pont-
Aven was one of the most beautiful villages in Finistere with its
bridge over the river Aven, stone mills, boats in the port, and
surrounding woods. Pont-Aven later became celebrated through
its association with Gauguin and his followers, but in 1883, at
the time of Osborne’s arrival, it was already at the height of its
popularity as an artist’s village amongst American, British and
Scandinavian artists.
Osborne painted small pictures of an old mill and the port, and
studies of children in a little square, beside the river, and in the
market place.!e larger canvas
Driving a Bargain
is a colourful,
carefully observed painting of groups of women and children in
the centre of Pont-Aven on market day.!is painting was sold at
Adam’s on 29th May 2002 (No. 23 - '620,000).
!e present painting
A Grey Morning in a Breton Farmyard
is
set at Keramperchec, a hamlet a mile from Pont-Aven, along the
estuary and sheltered by trees.!e pre-&x ‘KER’ is ubiquitous in
Brittany, referring to a village, hamlet or farmhouse. Each village
or dwelling was proud of its old stone well, often carved in an in-
dividual, regional style. Keramperchec was particularly admired
for its secluded rustic setting, with its thatched cottages, farm-
yard, and beautiful stone well and graceful cupola with carved
head, dating from 1783 just before the period of the Vendean
Wars.
Keramperchec attracted a number of artists, including Jona-
than Pratt in 1877, Fernand Quignon (1880), Walter Lang-
ley (1881), Sylvain Depeige and Osborne in 1883, Nathaniel
Hill in 1884, Arthur Wesley Dow in 1885 and Paul Abram in
c. 1895, (and probably Adrian Stokes in 1877 and Henry R.
Robinson in 1886), as well as photographers in the early twen-
tieth century. Even though it appears to have been a working
farm, even in Osborne’s day Keramperchec had become a place
where peasants and village girls would pose in a natural setting
for artists.
Osborne’s
A Grey Morning in a Breton Farmyard
, 1883, fea-
tures a man, a girl and two calves in the farmyard at Keramp-
erchec. !e man wears a soft Breton hat and blue jacket. He
pours water from a wooden bucket into a stone trough for the
calves to drink. Nearby, a girl, perhaps the daughter or grand-
daughter of the man, sits quietly watching. She wears a pink
and white bonnet and white collar, characteristic of the Pont-
Aven region, a brown apron over blue dress, and wooden clogs.
An earthenware pitcher is placed near her.
In her monograph on Walter Osborne, published in 1974,
Jeanne Sheehy writes of
A Grey Morning in a Breton Farmyard
:
“It is very much an Academy work, being carefully built up
and meticulously &nished - a typical example of early Osborne,
with the child and young animals’’. (p.19).
44
Walter Osborne RHA (1859-1903)
A Grey Morning in a Breton Farmyard (1883)
Oil on canvas, 52 x 73cm (20# x 28$”)
Provenance: H.D. Brown, (by 1883), his sale. Edmund Lupton, his sale, (c. 1942). James J. Davey.
Sold in these rooms, Important Irish Art Sale, 5th December 2006, lot 93, where purchased by the current owner
Exhibited: Dublin, Royal Hibernian Academy, 1884, no. 99;
Liverpool, Autumn Exhibition, 1884, No.884;
Walter Osborne Memorial Exhibition, RHA 1903, No.21 lent by H.D.Brown Esq
Literature: T. Bodkin,
Four Irish Landscape Painters
, 1920 (Irish Academic Press ed. 1987), pp. 188, 131, 141.
J. Sheehy,
Walter Osborne
, Gi)ord and Craven, Ballycotton, 1974, p. 19, no. 62.
J. Campbell,
Walter Osborne’s Wallet of Photographs
, Irish Art Review Yearbook, 2001, vol. 17, p. 153, illustrated p. 154.
