Norman Garstin (1847-1926)
A Breton Pardon (1912)
Oil on canvas, 59.7 x 71cm (23½ x 28'')

Provenance: The Artist's studio. Later in the Irish Sale, Christies London, May 2003, Lot. 39 where...

Norman Garstin (1847-1926)
A Breton Pardon (1912)
Oil on canvas, 59.7 x 71cm (23½ x 28'')

Provenance: The Artist's studio. Later in the Irish Sale, Christies London, May 2003, Lot. 39 where purchased.

Literature: Norman Garstin : Irishman and Newlyn Artist by Richard Pryke 2005 Catalogue Raisonné listed Page 208 in year 1912.

Pardon days captivated a number of British, Irish and European artists who visited Brittany in the late 19th Century and early 20th century. A letter from Norman Garstin to his daughter Alethea from 1912 is in the Garstin papers and seems to capture the moment depicted in this picture which occurred on a summer sketching party at Guémené sur Scorff in early July 1912: the party "suddenly came across a tiny church by a couple of farmhouses, very primitive and simple. Just as we arrived the procession started, all peasants, some men and women carrying banners, and a few little red acolytes attending the priest in a yellow cape. The peasants were all in costume coifs and lovely aprons, and, as they wound amongst the farm buildings, and thro the defiles of a little wood flecked with sun, they made lots of delightful pictures. Then out into a meadow with apple trees where they sang and played on terrible trumpets, but it was all wonderfully pictorial. Then they filed back again singing their ora pro nobis and came to the back of the church, where there was a great pile of brush wood. The people stood in a circle and the yellow robed priest set fire to the great pile ÔǪ the effect was really delightful and pagan. It was St. Johns Eve and these fires come down from the druids tho the good people did not know it. I stood on a cart and made a scribble ÔǪ but can not help that it would make a jolly subject to a fairly large picture.

It would appear that this work and a larger work exhibited at the 1913 Royal Academy Exhibition were a result of this encounter. This work remained in the artists collection and was in his studio at the time of his death.

Our thanks to Richard Pryke whose writings on Garstin formed the basis of this catalogue entry.

 

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