Léon Augustin L’Hermitte (French, 1844-1925)

Title: Le Pardon de Ploumanac’h

Year: 1878-1879

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 42 1/8 x 60 5/8 inches (54 x 72 inches framed)

Signature: Lower left: L L. Lhermitte

Exhibited:

Paris Salon, 1879, No. 1924

Provenance:

Purchased by the French government for the Musée Saint-Quentin, June 1879

Private Collection, France, Circa 1917

Private Collection, Germany, 1980

Sale, Sotheby’s, London, June 18, 1980, lot 121, as La Procession

Tanenbaum Collection, Toronto, Canada

Sotheby’s New York, November 2nd, 2001, 19th Century European Art, Lot 104.

Private Collection, Texas to the Present.

Literature:

Illustrated London News, April 28, 1888

Larousse, Léon Lhermitte

F. De Monnecove, Revue septentrionale, 1896, p. 134

F. Lees, The Artist, 1898, p. 88

M.M. Hamel, Catalogue de l’exposition Léon Lhermitte, Oshkosh, 1974, c 60, no. 58

Omaha, Joslyn Museum of Art, Jules Breton and the French Rural Tradition, 1982, p. 84

M. Le Pelley Fonteny, Léon Augustin Lhermitte: catalogue raisonne, Paris, 1991, p. 94, no. 23, illustrated

The penitential pilgrimages of Breton peasants were a fascinating subject for French painters in the nineteenth century, from Gustave Courbet to Jules Breton to Paul Gaugin, among others. Brittany, where the recognizable peasant women in white caps appeared frequently in works by L’Hermitte, was a deeply Catholic region of France.

In Le Pardon de Ploumanac’h, L’Hermitte depicted one of the sacred pilgrimages which took place all over the region, this one in the village of Ploumcnac’h. Each village, no matter how small, old, or impoverished had a church dedicated to a particular saint, and held a pardon in his or her honor. These processions combined the religious ceremony of Catholicism and regional folklore and were deeply spiritual and solemn. Parishioners paid homage to, and asked for, forgiveness from the saint. In L’Hermitte’s composition, the Breton women carry candles and crucifixes and a statue of the Pieta. In addition to saints, Brittany pardons also venerated the Virgin Mary. At the right of the composition, two figures kneel in prayer, while next to them a young mother makes the signs of the cross as she cradles her child in her other arm. L’Hermitte has captured the simplicity and solemnity of the ceremony against the backdrop of the harsh Breton landscape. He has shown the piety and devotion in the faces of the peasants. The frail, bent figures of an old peasant woman, leading the procession as she clutches a flickering candle in her gnarled hand brings to mind the old Breton proverb, “do not judge the power of a saint by the size of its church.” Thus, in the same Realist vein as Courbet’s A Burial at Ornans (1849-1850), Le Pardon de Ploumanac’h does not glamorize or embellish this scene of pious Breton women—some young and some old—who dutifully carry out their religious practices. For further comparison, it is interesting to note that in Le Pardon de Ploumanac’h there is an element of religious unity not found in Courbet’s Burial at Ornans; L’Hermitte’s canvas seems to be paying homage to these devout Breton women.

This painting was originally exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1879.

Leon L’Hermitte was born in 1844 and was still executing works in the French rural tradition at his death in 1925, making him the last in an illustrious group of artists dedicated to this genre. He showed artistic talent at a young age, and in 1863 left his home at Mont-Saint-Pere, Aisne for the Petite Ecole, where he studied with Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran, in Paris. Lecoq was known for his program of training the visual memory of his students, and his theories had a profound effect on L’Hermitte. It was in his studio that L’Hermitte formed a life-long friendship with Cazin and also became acquainted with Legros, Fantin-Latour and Rodin. L’Hermitte sent his initial entry to the Salon in 1864 at the age of 19; he continued to exhibit charcoal drawings and paintings regularly and pastels after 1885, winning his first medal in 1874 with La Moisson (Musee de Carcassonne). Other prizes and honors came to L’Hermitte throughout his long career, including the Grand Prix at the Exhibition Universelle in 1889, the Diplome d’honneur at Dresden in 1890, and the Legion d’honneur. He was a founding member of the Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts.

Museum Collections Include:

Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin; Goteborg Art Gallery, Sweden; Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton; Melton Park Gallery, Oklahoma City; Oklahoma City Art Museum, OK; Paine Art Center, Oshkosh; Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; Musee d’Orsay, Paris; van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam; John G. Johnson Collection, Philadelphia; Reading Public Museum and Art Gallery, PA; Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester; Museum of Fine Art, Saintes; Marion Koogler McNay Art Institute, San Antonio; Washington University Gallery of Art, St. Louis; National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo; Toledo Museum of Art, OH; Art Gallery, Ontario; Art Institute of Chicago, IL; Museum of Fine Art, Boston; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Cleveland Museum of Art, OH; Denver Museum of Art, CO; Montreal Museum of Fine Art, Canada