AB-MP2-1957-002 — The Seine (1957)

Technical information

Title: The Seine
Date: 1957
Technique: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 33 × 55 cm
Location: Private collection

Biographical / historical context

With The Seine, Breuillaud transposes a Parisian motif—the river and the built masses—into a language of coloured planes and simplified signs. In 1957, his urban views move away from descriptive record to become constructions in which space is conceived as a field of relationships: the verticals of buildings, the horizontals of water, and circular punctuations (moon, sun, reflections) that mark the surface.

The cardboard support, frequently chosen for these variations, favours a painting of synthesis, more direct, in which the artist can test bold chromatic accords.

Formal / stylistic description

The composition unfolds on a violet ground that serves as a setting for the city blocks, treated as bluish, grey-green and reddish rectangular modules. At the centre, a lighter and more structured band evokes the bank and reflections, while two pale, slightly offset discs suggest celestial bodies or lights on the water.

Dark vertical strokes interrupt certain flats like chimneys or façade slits, enhancing the sense of urban silhouettes. Despite the abstraction, the overall organisation remains legible: an implicit horizon, built masses on either side, and a circulation of the gaze between verticals and horizontals.

Comparative analysis / related works

This urban interpretation extends the “streets” and “alleyways” of 1955–1956 toward a more panoramic structure: the narrow passage becomes here an urban landscape organised around a horizontal axis.

The luminous discs and violet dominance link the work to Breuillaud’s researches on night and contre-jour effects, where colour organises depth more than perspective. One also notes an affinity with mosaic-like compositions in which architecture is broken into modules: façades are no longer volumes, but fields of rectangles that vary in density and temperature.

Compared with the rotation or whirlwind researches, The Seine maintains stability: planes stack and answer each other, but the reading is held by the river’s horizontality—a true line of breathing amid the verticals.

Justification of dating and attribution

The date 1957 accords with the tight modular treatment, increased simplification of façades, and the appearance of recurring signs (discs, vertical slits) observed in contemporary works.

The work is signed at lower right; the signature and handling correspond to Breuillaud’s established corpus on cardboard. The title reinforces iconographic coherence with his urban and fluvial themes of this period.

Provenance / exhibitions / publications

Provenance: Private collection.