France, (1881-1945)
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Bretagne, femme gardant des cochons #1
- [Brittany, woman keeping pigs #1]
- (c. 1911-1913), sepia tone photograph
- 4.5 x 3.4 in. (11.2 x 8.5 cm.)
- Musèe d’Orsay
-
Porcs dans une cour de ferme
- [Pigs in a farm yard]
- (ca. 1913), sepia tone photograph
- 4.8 x 3.6 in. (12 x 9 cm.)
- Musée d’Orsay
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Bretagne, femme gardant des cochons #2
- [Brittany, woman keeping pigs #2]
- (c. 1911-1913), sepia tone photograph
- 4.5 x 3.4 in. (11.2 x 8.5 cm.)
- Musèe d’Orsay
-
Editor’s Note:
I have included these three photographs from Charles Lhermitte in the museum in preparation for a up coming Exhibition: “Le Porcs de Bretagne Exhibition” that is planned for some future date. These photographs were made so close in time to the painted works of the Impressionists that, to me, they call up an alternate view of Brittany from the same time period that the impressionist saw it.
Lhermitte’s photographic work tended towards realism, which here becomes pleine air as he captures a passing moment in the life of some pigs of Brittany, so favored as subjects by the Impressionists.
And the woman… Twenty years earlier, could she have actually been the same young girl with her pigs that was the subject of a work painted by Bernard or Gauguin or Moret…
A book of Lhermitte’s photographs of Brittany is still available for sale used and is in many libraries: Lhermitte, Charles, and Louis Guilloux. Souvenirs de Bretagne: photographies de Charles Lhermitte, 1911-1913. Paris: Chêne, 1977.
About the Artist
Charles Augustin Lhermitte, French, (1881-1945) was the son of the realist painter Lèon Lhermitte (1844-1925) and worked in photography for about twenty years, stopping in the 1920s.
Although a member of the pictorialist movement, he remained somewhat of a novice to the technique, and was probably influenced more by naturalism, which he inherited from his father, than by symbolism and impressionism. His work is generally characterized by a clear definition rather than the soft focus. [DES-4/07]
Additional information:
- See also the (ca. 1865) photographs by Léon Crémière here in the museum.