Robert Bevan 1865-1925
Peasant in a Landscape c.1893
Charcoal 10 x 14 inches (25.4 x 35.6 cm)
Stamped 'RPB' twice b.r. and inscribed 'K' b.l
PROVENANCE:
Private Collection.
This is a further charcoal drawing from Bevan's second period at Pont Aven from 1893 to 1894. Bevan took particular interest in the life of the country people there, making a sequence of drawings and watercolours of ploughmen and harvesters, recording the agricultural transition of the season as well as the equipment and materials that they used. Here he shows a peasant returning from gathering faggots for firewood, evidently wearing sabots, the wooden clogs characteristic of the region. The rhythmic charcoal strokes to render the sky and trees give them a feeling of animation, a device which Bevan adopted from Gauguin, with whom he was on friendly terms in Pont Aven.