Technical information
- Title : The Sacré-Cœur Seen from the Rooftops
- Date : c. 1930–1936 (before acquisition in 1936)
- Technique : Oil on canvas
- Dimensions : 82 × 98 cm
- Location : Mairie d’Erquy (State deposit) / Inv. FNAC 53988
Biographical / historical context
This urban view belongs to Breuillaud’s Paris years, when he explored the city from its heights and rooflines. The Sacré-Cœur motif, a monumental landmark on the Montmartre hill, offers an immediately legible subject while allowing him to shift the focus toward the architecture of the capital itself: a fabric of roofs, chimneys, and sloping planes in which the city is built as a landscape.
The direct purchase from the artist in 1936 provides a firm terminus ante quem: the canvas must be earlier than (or contemporary with) that date. Its later administrative history—State property, deposited at the Erquy town hall in 1956—confirms the status of a work recognized and followed within public circuits of the period.
Formal / stylistic description
The composition is organized in successive planes. In the foreground, a dark band of roofs and chimneys forms a stable base—almost a terrace—that closes the bottom of the painting. In the middle distance, the rooftops thicken into a mosaic: grey-blue volumes, broken slopes, dormers, and vertical flues structure the space as a tight network, punctuated by warm touches of brick and ochre.
In the background, the silhouette of the Sacré-Cœur—central dome and bell tower—rises above the urban masses, slightly softened by the air. Breuillaud avoids spectacle: the monument is not painted as a triumphant emblem, but as a light form held at a distance, sealing the depth of field.
The brushwork is broad and supple. It modulates surfaces without lingering on descriptive minutiae, privileging tonal relationships and the architecture of planes. The palette remains measured (greys, blues, browns), revived by a few red-orange accents that punctuate the paint and prevent the whole from closing in. A pale, lightly pink sky diffuses a gentle light, without drama, reinforcing a sense of calm suspension.
Comparative analysis / related works
Through its elevated viewpoint and Montmartre subject, the painting relates to the Paris city views made before the war, in which architecture is approached as landscape. The city becomes an organism of planes and rhythms: alternation of verticals (chimneys, spires) and obliques (zinc slopes), the eye moving along ridgelines, and a constant balance between built mass and the breathing space of the sky.
The monument’s treatment—reduced to a readable form yet integrated within the whole—reveals a constructive simplification: the place remains identifiable while plastic coherence takes precedence. This restraint—no anecdote, no picturesque detail—distinguishes the work from a touristic view and situates it within a broader inquiry into the solidity of volumes and atmospheric vibration.
Justification of dating and attribution
Two elements support placing the work in the first half of the 1930s: the purchase directly from the artist in 1936 provides a terminus ante quem, and the pictorial language—plane-based construction, sober palette, synthetic figuration still attentive to real roof rhythms—corresponds to a Paris phase in which Breuillaud treated identifiable urban subjects before later developments.
In the absence of a dated inscription on the canvas, a range of “c. 1930–1936” remains the most cautious proposal. It could be narrowed if acquisition documents (invoice, correspondence, detailed administrative notes) allowed the exact year to be specified.
Provenance / exhibitions / publications
Purchased from the artist: 1936.
State property: Inv. FNAC 53988.
Deposit: Mairie d’Erquy, 1956.