Morrice is well-known for his small sketches, or pochades, of Paris and Venice; in both places, he rarely wandered away from the water. In Paris, where he lived from early 1890, he moved to an apartment overlooking the Seine as early as he could. When he ventured away, it was usually to seaside resorts or small towns, endless sources of new subjects. For years, dealers routinely entitled them “Brittany” or “St. Malo”, and the present sketch is no exception. It belongs to a whole series of similar small marines, hard to locate, and therefore date because most offer no geographical clue.
They are characterized by paint applied thinly on the wooden panel, a technique the artist adopted around 1904. Some are pure marines of sea and sky, but never without a sailboat, others have a few rocks in the foreground; in a third group, a man-made detail is a priceless clue: a green railing found in some of them spells “Dieppe”, Normandy, which Morrice visited several times over the years, including a busy working week in June 1906. As Paris was unusually hot that summer, he went to Brittany, going around it following the seashore; he passed through Morlaix in the north-west and Quimper in the south-west, ending up in Le Pouldu, past Concarneau.
But the present sketch is later than 1906: the artist uses less brush strokes, and the scene is now totally devoid of anything that would precisely locate it. Not important for the artist, who wants to share his enjoyment of this marine view on a sunny day; on the right, the schooner bobbing on the water adds to the joyous atmosphere. The thinner paint application is also found in many pochades painted in Concarneau between mid-November 1909 and mid-April 1910. Actually, one drawing from the Concarneau Sketchbook (#15, MMFA, page 21, see below) is almost a mirror image of the present sketch. Based on this, I think this sketch was also painted near to Concarneau on during that long stay.
Lucie Dorais, February 2024
Morrice spent most of the winter of 1909-1910 in the studio in Concarneau. In Concarneau, the artist recaptured his zest for life. His marine paintings sing in a rich harmony of pinks greys and indigos, but soon Morrice’s gaze turned from the sea; he mingled with market crowds and was often at the circus. From Concarneau he easily reached Le Pouldu, made famous by Gauguin. The works inspired by Concarneau and Le Pouldu, as well as by the stay in Quebec in the summer of 1910, reflect a new balance in the painter’s art: bright but not garish colours and studied compositions that are nonetheless natural in appearance.
