Os Banhos de Mar em Étretat, França (Bathing in Étretat) - Eugène Modeste Edmond Le Poittevin

Os Banhos de Mar em Étretat, França (Bathing in Étretat) - Eugène Modeste Edmond Le Poittevin

Étretat - França

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OST - 63x149 - 1864

The painting Sea Bathing, the Beach at Etretat by Eugène Le Poittevin was thought to have been lost since the fall of Napoleon III – who bought it at the 1865 Salon – when some of his belongings were sold. It was known only from a photograph taken by the art dealers Maison Goupil, from a few drawings by the artist himself, and from the descriptions given by critics at the 1865 Salon, where it was exhibited.
It was however always considered to be his masterpiece, on the same footing as his other large seaside painting, which has almost the same title (Sea Bathing atEtretat; Troyes, Musée des Beaux-Arts et d’Archéologie; inv. 898.2.3) and was painted a year later, no doubt following on directly from the present painting.
All trace of the painting was lost after the proclamation of the Third Republic on 4 September 1870 and the imprisonment and then exile of Napoleon III to England. The emperor’s assets were impounded: some were returned to him (and to the empress) while others were sold. Sea Bathing, the Beach at Etretat was sent for storage to the Garde Meuble, after which it disappeared. The most likely hypothesis is that it was returned to the empress and that she, in exile in Spain at the end of her life, gave it away to her nephews, the Dukes of Alba (see N. Sébille, op. cit.).
Sea Bathing, the Beach at Etretat was exhibited at the 1865 Salon and acquired directly by Emperor Napoleon III himself, an indication of the work’s importance. A couple of years later – although the painting was at that time hanging on the walls of the Palais de l’Elysée, then the imperial residence – members of the paintings jury asked Eugène Le Poittevin to lend Sea Bathing, the Beach at Etretat to the 1867 Exposition Universelle, a remarkable honour and a reminder of the admiration his contemporaries felt for the painting.
More than a simple seaside genre scene, this is an ambitious composition. Despite the interval of 150 years, the artist’s great achievement is still clearly apparent today. Opting for a panoramic format that is astonishing in its originality – and indeed its modernity – Le Poittevin seems to have created, over one and a half metres, a real, almost cinematographic tracking shot along the length of the Etretat beach. Arrayed across it, from left to right, is a throng of figures enjoying themselves: bathers, fashionable women in crinolines, well-dressed men and peddlers.

The more ‘decorative’ elements of the composition all successfully help to evoke the delightful atmosphere of a Normandy summer – from the bathing huts on the right to the splendid still life of heaped clothes and belongings in the foreground, to the lobster pots and the planks of wood laid on the ground, which allowed bathers and walkers to cross over the sand and shingle on the beach.
Better still, Le Poittevin’s ambition seems here to have exceeded the limitations of the simple genre scene. He has sought to go beyond his taste for anecdote by adding an extra dimension to the work, a more social and personal angle. Thanks to Raymond Lindon, who published a long article on the painting in 1967 (op. cit., pp. 349-357), we have every reason to believe that the figures the artist has chosen to feature in the scene are not studio sketches or even anonymous models, but actual portraits of people close to the artist. Lindon, on the basis of an in-depth analysis of the painter’s family and social circle in Normandy, as well as photographs of the period, has convincingly been able to identify most of the protagonists in this charming piece of theatre. Thus, the bearded man in the centre of the composition may well be the painter Charles Landelle (1821-1908); while the other elegant bearded man on the right, reading his newspaper, is probably the illustrator and caricaturist Bertall (1820-1882). Last but certainly not least, note the skinny, lanky young man among the bathers. The painter has shown this still anonymous adolescent just after he has emerged from the sea, in a black bathing costume, wearing a cap, stooping and no doubt shivering from the cold waters of the Channel. This is Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893), Le Poittevin’s great-nephew…
Not only a snapshot of social life under the Second Empire but also an affecting and joyful illustration of the developing leisured society, Sea Bathing, the Beach at Etretat offers a vision that is astonishingly original for its time, in which the bustling protagonists play their part cheerfully, encapsulating the happiness of summer. The artist looks with amusement and benevolence upon the new pastimes of the modern world, with its enthusiasm for escape to fresh air and wide open spaces.