AB-PR-1948-005 — Provençal Sarabande (II) (1948)

Technical information

Title : Provençal Sarabande (II)
Date : 1948
Technique : Oil on canvas
Dimensions : 45 × 54 cm
Location : Private collection *

Biographical / historical context

In 1948, André Breuillaud developed several figurative compositions devoted to dance, processions, and popular rites. These collective scenes allowed him to reconcile the energy of movement with a rigorous sense of organization, within an iconography strongly marked by Provence and by the idea of a timeless folklore.

Provençal Sarabande (II) is closely related to Provençal Sarabande (I) (AB-PR-1948-004), a very large-format work dated the same year. On a more modest scale, this second version can be read as a tighter variation that preserves the spirit of a choreographic frieze while concentrating the scene around the central gestural nucleus.

Formal / stylistic description

The composition unfolds like a moving frieze: a group of stylized figures advances from left to right in a cadence of steps, twists, and raised arms. At the centre, a male figure wearing a hat and dressed in a deep blue structures the scene; around him, female silhouettes in russet or pale yellow dresses, carrying baskets, punctuate the rhythm through alternations of diagonals and curves.

Bodies are treated as flat areas of colour bounded by dark outlines. Faces, reduced to mask-like signs, participate in a deliberate stylization that privileges emblem and overall dynamic rather than portraiture. The elongated, angular legs heighten the impression of dance and forward motion.

The background remains minimally descriptive: a greenish line of relief and the presence of large sinuous branches, like a vault, suffice to situate the action within a synthesized Provençal landscape. The palette combines red earths and browns, muted greens, and brighter accents (the central blue, touches of ochre and yellow), unified by a warm pinkish-orange dominance.

Comparative analysis / related works

By subject and band-like structure, Provençal Sarabande (II) belongs to the corpus of collective scenes in which Breuillaud pushes the simplification of the figure toward an ideogram. The composition privileges repetition, the cadence of steps, and the balance of masses, in a conception close to mural decoration.

Comparison with Provençal Sarabande (I) clarifies the role of this second version. The large-format work (89 × 116 cm) amplifies the frieze and intensifies contrasts, dramatizing the scene through a sharper palette and a more theatrical spatialization. While drawing on the same matrix, Provençal Sarabande (II) concentrates on the motif’s legibility: the group seems tightened, relationships between forms are more immediate, and the warm accord of the ground reinforces overall unity.

The dialogue between the two works reveals a search for variation on a single theme, poised between decorative power and the refinement of a pictorial rhythm.

Justification of dating and attribution

The 1948 dating is consistent with the radical stylization of figures, the frieze-like organization, and the chromatic intensity characteristic of Breuillaud’s immediate post-war figurative compositions, as seen in Provençal Sarabande (I), dated the same year.

Attribution to André Breuillaud is supported by the stylistic coherence (outlined flats, mask-faces, the cadence of a procession) and by the presence of a signature at lower right. The reverse bears a frame-maker’s stamp, now scarcely legible, compatible with a studio support.