AB-PR1-1945-002 — The Haunted House (1945)

Technical information

Title : The Haunted House
Date : 1945
Technique : Oil on Isorel (hardboard)
Dimensions : 32 × 41 cm
Location : Private collection

Biographical / historical context

This landscape belongs to the immediate post‑war period, when Breuillaud repeatedly returns to Vaucluse motifs: terraced hills, cultivated parcels, olive trees, and isolated buildings. On Isorel, well suited to painting from life, he pursues a synthesis between direct observation and construction by masses, favouring a sober atmosphere over meticulous description.

The title “The Haunted House,” noted on the reverse together with the date, signals a poetic intention: not a fantastic subject, but the expressive charge of a solitary place, made uncanny by the countryside’s silence, the density of the sky, and the emphasis on voids (dark openings).

Formal / stylistic description

The composition is organized in broad, superimposed planes. In the foreground, a light slope (beige‑yellow and pinkish tones) forms a vast luminous carpet, slightly inclined, leading into an orchard area. Stylized olive trees—reduced to rounded masses and dark trunks—punctuate the scene and mark depth.

In the middle ground, a small light house, almost cubic, stands out; a stark dark opening acts as a visual stop and contributes to the motif’s “inhabited/uninhabited” character. Further back, a larger ochre building sits on a terrace like a simplified block. The background consists of hills treated in bands and soft facets, alternating brown earths and muted greens.

A deep blue, densely brushed sky dominates the whole: it compresses the horizon and heightens the sensation of isolation. The brushwork remains visible without excessive impasto—brushed flats, revisions left apparent, values set by juxtaposition rather than by gradients. The ensemble retains figurative legibility while tending toward a structural simplification of forms.

Comparative analysis / related works

Compared with “Le Barroux seen from Caromb” (AB-PR1-1945-001), also on Isorel and dated 1945, this work shifts interest from a perched village to a humbler, more rural motif: orchards, parcels, and an isolated building. One nonetheless finds the same construction through superimposed planes and the same search for balance between warm ochres and bluish‑violet counterpoints in the distance.

Where AB-PR1-1945-001 emphasizes architectural density, The Haunted House relies more on empty space and atmosphere: the broad pale slope and the dark sky create a silent tension that, in its sobriety, foreshadows the more systematic simplifications of the following years.

Justification of dating and attribution

The date 1945 is attested by an inscription on the reverse that also records the title.

Stylistically, the palette of ochres and muted greens, the stratification of relief into coloured bands, and the progressive simplification of volumes are characteristic of Breuillaud’s landscapes of the mid‑1940s, before the more pronounced angular geometrization of the PR2 cycle.