Technical information
- Title : Fiery Hills of Provence
- Date : 1950
- Technique : Oil on panel
- Dimensions : 45 × 60 cm
- Location : Private collection
Biographical / historical context
At the turn of the 1950s, André Breuillaud intensifies his research into “construction through colour”. The Provençal landscape remains his anchor, but it is treated as an architecture of planes, rhythms and linear tensions.
This work marks a moment when the reading of the motif (hills, paths, vegetation, buildings) is maintained, while tipping toward a more energetic and synthetic expression—close to a chromatic score.
Formal / stylistic description
The landscape is organised in broad bands and diagonals that lead the eye from the ochre foreground toward the hills and ridges in the distance. Forms do not describe atmospheric depth; they interlock and answer one another like facets.
Ochres and oranges dominate, crossed by acidic greens and darker blues. Colour is not merely a climate: it becomes the compositional engine, laid in dense areas and heightened by linear accents.
At the centre, a pale building (house or farm) serves as a point of fixation, around which vegetal curves and more nervous tracings unfold. Brushwork is lively—at times swirling—giving the landscape a sense of almost incandescent heat.
The artist’s signature is visible at lower left, integrated into the pictorial field without interrupting the overall movement.
Comparative analysis / related works
By its flamboyant chromatic range and gestural dynamism, this painting stands apart from more “architectured” landscapes in which volumes are set as large blocks (towns and villages by strata). Here, the cadence of strokes and the circulation of curves take precedence.
It nevertheless dialogues with other PR2 landscapes of 1950 through the same principle of interlocking planes and motif simplification: the subject remains recognisable, but is wholly subordinated to a pictorial logic of construction.
Justification of dating and attribution
The dating to 1950 is supported by the balance typical of that year between motif legibility and a push toward synthesis: warm palette, juxtaposed planes, contours that structure without enclosing, and dynamic brushwork.
Attribution to André Breuillaud is confirmed by the signature at lower left and by constants observable in his Provençal landscapes of the immediate post-war period: colour tension, construction through flat tones, and terrain organised as a “mosaic”.
Provenance / exhibitions / publications
Private collection.
© Bruno Restout — Catalogue raisonné André Breuillaud