Mathurin Janssaud | Genre painter

Mathurin Janssaud (1857-1940) was born in Manosque, Provence. Like many other painters, he lived and painted in Paris. But the reputation of Concarneau draws and before the First World War, he dropped his native Provence for changing skies of Brittany, which became his only source of inspiration. A Concarneau, it is the local color they are looking for.

What matters, and indeed for the artist in search of picturesque, genre scenes, characters typed, that the port of Cornwall! Everything is to do everything is to be painted. The sea, the sun at sunset, stormy skies, sails and men to the penalty or rest, women dressed busiest market, this whole life teeming offered to his eyes.

He chose pastel or watercolor, better able to restore transparency of the atmosphere and the vagaries of Breton’s skies. He nevertheless prefers to landscape, the evocation of local life, the marketplace of course, subject amply addressed by all painters, but also some scenes more original, less folk, less conventional. So these women turned in a skirt, which seeks freshness under a stormy sky: audacity shy of a painter who will always abide by the taste of the time, that of a middle class which seeks above all picturesque works, which bill certifies the artist, if not talent, at least the trade.

Janssaud gives his audience what he loves. Painter applied prudent trader, prices will continue to climb and maintain yet.

Thus in 1906, his draft poster is chosen to promote the second edition of the feast of filet Bleus, a clear sign of a perfect integration into local life.

Perfect representative of a current figurative, conformist and reassuring, Janssaud was confined in the genre scenes, which are provided comfortable notoriety. Mathurin Janssaud died in 1940. | © Galerie Fleury