Jules Breton (1827-1906)

In a sale held by the Coutances auction house on Saturday, February 26, the talent of Virginie Demont-Breton (1859-1935) could be appreciated with an 1880 painting: Esquisse de la femme de pêcheur (Sketch of a Fisherman's Wife).

Like causes produce like effects. This idea was confirmed by the second Kahn Library sale, punctuated by almost surrealist surprises and preemptions.

In collaboration with the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Musée d’Orsay focuses on the year 1874 and the first exhibition of independent artists who were soon to be called “Impressionists”.

The series of paintings, by the Quimper-born artist for the Ker-Moor Hotel in Bénodet, won't leave its native Brittany.

Unveiled at the end of 2019, the project to restore the "Cap 44" building, which will house an expanded version of the Jules Verne Museum within the Cité des imaginaires, is taking shape. But the latter will not open until 2028 due to the magnitude of the necessary work needed to convert this former flour mill.

Boisgirard-Antonini announced the second part of the sale of Pierre Jacob's Jules Verne collection, to be held in room 9, on October 26. Of note is a Tour du Monde en 80 Jours (Tour of the World in 80 Days), a volume in blue percaline known to be a single example (€18,000/25,000).

The Museum of Arts, Trades and Commerce in Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys closed for good in October for lack of a buyer. The 2,237 pieces of its collection of popular art from the 19th and 20th centuries will be offered at auction in the small Morbihan town by Adjurg'art, from April 13 to 16

André Breton’s 1931 Object with a Symbolic Operation has been classified as one of France’s national treasures, following in the wake of his manuscripts. The Consultative Commission for National Treasures deemed the item, which is currently held at the Pompidou Center, a “pioneering work” in the history of Surrealism.

Editions de l'Observatoire is publishing the first novel by art critic Léa Chauvel-Levy, devoted to the life of Simone Kahn (1897-1980), who became Simone Breton in 1921. A dive into the bubbling Paris of the Roaring Twenties is to be published on September 18. 

Thanks to the Friends of the Orsay and Orangerie Museums, the institution has acquired O’Conor’s 1923 work Breton Boy in Profile, likely painted in Pont-Aven. The portrait stands out for both its formal radicalism and its subject: a masculine model, as opposed to O’Conor’s typical Breton girls in regional costume.