Fisher Women of Cancale Augustin Feyen-Perrin

The now somewhat obscure Auguste Feyen-Perrin became popular in the last quarter of the nineteenth century as a painter of the women of Cancale. The small town on the Breton coast, known for oyster farming and fishing, inspired many of his compositions, which usually depict the everyday lives of local women.
His painting held by the Museum of Fine Arts, many variations of which are known, was quite successful in 1881 at the Paris Salon and at the autumn exhibition of the Hungarian National Society of Fine Arts. Its theme is the so-called “pêche à pied”, the collecting of fish and mussels in shallow water at low tide. The composition focuses on three Cancale “graces” walking barefoot in the wet sand, wearing simple, unadorned attire, gracefully bearing their full baskets towards home. Their attractive, slender, yet noble and powerful figures emerge in front of a cloudy sky, seen slightly from below, which lends a kind of monumentality to their appearance. True to the poetic naturalism which made him popular, Feyen-Perrin did not depict the strain and fatigue of physical labour, but rather conjured up an idealised picture of traditional fishing life.

Anna Zsófia Kovács