{"meta":{"version":"2.1","_links":{"self":{"href":"https://api.vam.ac.uk/v2/object/O81622"},"collection_page":{"href":"https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O81622/"}},"images":{"_primary_thumbnail":"https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2006AG4479/full/!100,100/0/default.jpg","_iiif_image":"https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2006AG4479/","_alt_iiif_image":[],"imageResolution":"high","_images_meta":[{"assetRef":"2006AG4479","copyright":"©Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2016JA6530","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false}]},"see_also":{"_iiif_pres":"https://iiif.vam.ac.uk/collections/O81622/manifest.json","_alt_iiif_pres":[]}},"record":{"systemNumber":"O81622","accessionNumber":"CAI.68","objectType":"Oil painting","titles":[{"title":"The Market Place of Ploudalmézeau, Brittany","type":"popular title"}],"summaryDescription":"Léon Lhermitte (1844-1925) was born in Mont-Saint-Père but became a student at the Petite Ecole in Paris, under the supervision of Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran (1802-1897), whose classes were also  attended by Henri Fantin-Latour (1836-1904) and Alphonse Legros (1837-1911) among others. He exhibited at the Salon between 1866 and the first decade of the 20th century. He was a founder-member of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1890 and was made officer of the Légion d'honneur in 1894.\r\n\r\nThis painting is typical of Lhermitte's peasant scenes. It shows a scene of everyday life in the market place of a small village in Brittany, Ploudalmezeau. \n\n\r\n\r\n ","physicalDescription":"Men and women in traditional dresses chatting and buying fruits and vegetables on a square in a village.","artistMakerPerson":[{"name":{"text":"Lhermitte, Léon-Augustin","id":"A9817"},"association":{"text":"artist","id":"AAT25103"},"note":""}],"artistMakerOrganisations":[],"artistMakerPeople":[],"materials":[{"text":"oil paint","id":"AAT15050"},{"text":"canvas","id":"AAT14078"}],"techniques":[{"text":"oil painting","id":"AAT178684"}],"materialsAndTechniques":"oil on canvas","categories":[{"text":"Shopping","id":"THES48895"},{"text":"Paintings","id":"THES48917"}],"styles":[{"text":"French School","id":"x31263"},{"text":"Realism","id":"x47178"}],"collectionCode":{"text":"PDP","id":"THES48595"},"images":["2006AG4479","2016JA6530"],"imageResolution":"high","galleryLocations":[{"current":{"text":"81","id":"THES49713"},"free":"","case":"WEST WALL","shelf":"","box":""}],"partTypes":[[{"text":"oil paintings","id":"AAT33799"}]],"contentWarnings":[{"apprise":"","note":""}],"placesOfOrigin":[{"place":{"text":"Mont-Saint-Père","id":"x47344"},"association":{"text":"painted","id":"x30138"},"note":""}],"productionDates":[{"date":{"text":"1877","earliest":"1877-01-01","latest":"1877-12-31"},"association":{"text":"painted","id":"x30138"},"note":""}],"associatedObjects":[],"creditLine":"Bequeathed by Constantine Alexander Ionides","dimensions":[{"dimension":"Height","value":"40","unit":"cm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"part":"estimate","note":""},{"dimension":"Width","value":"57.2","unit":"cm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"part":"estimate","note":""},{"dimension":"Height","value":"65","unit":"cm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"11/08/2016","earliest":"2016-08-11","latest":"2016-08-11"},"part":"frame","note":""},{"dimension":"Width","value":"82","unit":"cm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"11/08/2016","earliest":"2016-08-11","latest":"2016-08-11"},"part":"frame","note":""}],"dimensionsNote":"Dimensions taken from C.M. Kauffmann, <i>Catalogue of Foreign Paintings, II. 1800-1900</i>, London, Victoria and Albert Museum, 1973","marksAndInscriptions":[{"content":"'L. Lhermitte - 77'","inscriber":{"name":{"text":"","id":""},"association":{"text":"","id":""}},"date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"description":"","interpretation":"","language":"","medium":"","method":"","position":"","script":"","translation":"","transliteration":"","type":"","note":"Signed and dated by the artist, lower right"}],"objectHistory":"Commissioned from the artist (as a pair with CAI 69) by Constantine Alexander Ionides around April 1877 (a letter in a private collection from Lhermitte in Paris to Ionides dated 19 April 1877 mentions that one of his two pictures is finished and that the other would be ready in time for his next trip to London). listed  in Ionides' inventory of  November 1881 as  either 'Marché au pommes' or 'Marché au fruits' by  Lhermitte, each with a  valuation of £75;  bequeathed by  Constantine Alexander  Ionides, 1900.\n\nHistorical significance: This painting is typical of Lhermitte's peasant genre scenes.\n \r\nThe present work depicts a scene of everyday life in the market place of the Breton village of  Ploudalmezeau. According to Lhermitte's diary it was executed in Mont-Saint-Père, the artist's native town, after sketches and documents brought back from Brittany in the last two to three years.\r\nThe artist depicted here figures in traditional dresses with the typical Breton headgear, entirely wrapped around the face, called <i>supellinenn</i> and already at the time considered as archaic. \n\nComparable market scenes include <i>Apple Market, Landerneau, Brittany</i> dated c. 1878, in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and <i>Market at Château-Thierrry</i>, executed in 1879, in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid. \r\n","historicalContext":"19th-century French art is marked by a succession of movements based on a more or less close relationship with nature. At the beginning of the century, Romantic artists were fascinated by nature they interpreted as a mirror of the mind. They investigated human nature and personality, the folk culture, the national and ethnic origins, the medieval era, the exotic, the remote, the mysterious and the occult. This movement was heralded in France by such painter as Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863). In its opposition to academic art and its demand for a modern style Realism continued the aims of the Romantics. They assumed that reality could be perceived without distortion or idealization, and sought after a mean to combine the perception of the individual with objectivity. This reaction in French painting against the Grand Manner is well represented by Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) who wrote a 'Manifesto of Realism', entitled <i>Le Réalisme</i> published in Paris in 1855. These ideas were challenged by the group of the Barbizon painters, who formed a recognizable school from the early 1830s to the 1870s and developed a free, broad and rough technique. They were mainly concerned by landscape painting and the rendering of light. The works of Narcisse Virgile Diaz de la Peña (1807-1876), Jules Dupré (1811-1889), Théodore Rousseau (1812-1867), Constant Troyon (1810-1865) and Jean-François Millet (1814-1875) anticipate somehow  the <i>plein-air</i> landscapes of the Impressionists.","briefDescription":"Oil painting, 'The Market Place of Ploudalmézeau, Brittany', Léon Augustin Lhermitte, 1877","bibliographicReferences":[{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Kauffmann, C.M. <u>Catalogue of Foreign Paintings, II. 1800-1900 </u>, London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1973, p. 64, cat. no. 138."},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"M. Hamel, <u>Catalogue de l'exposition Léon Lhermitte</u>, Oshkosh, The paine Art Cebtre Arboretum, 1974, C 50, cat. 48"},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Delouche, D., <u>Les peintres et le Paysan breton</u>, Paris, 1989, p. 64."},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Le Pelley Fonteny, M., <u>Léon Augustin Lhermitte (1844-1825). Catalogue raisonné</u>, Paris, 1991, cat. 17, p. 93."},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"‘Society of French Artists’, <u>Illustrated London News</u> , 5 June 1875, p.542\r\n"}],"production":"","productionType":{"text":"","id":""},"contentDescription":"","contentPlaces":[{"text":"Ploudalmézeau","id":"x36631"}],"associatedPlaces":[],"contentPerson":[],"associatedPerson":[],"contentOrganisations":[],"associatedOrganisations":[],"contentPeople":[],"associatedPeople":[],"contentEvents":[],"associatedEvents":[],"contentOthers":[{"text":"markets","id":"x31797"}],"contentConcepts":[],"contentLiteraryRefs":[],"galleryLabels":[],"partNumbers":["CAI.68"],"accessionNumberNum":"68","accessionNumberPrefix":"CAI","accessionYear":null,"otherNumbers":[],"copyNumber":"","aspects":["WHOLE"],"assets":[],"recordModificationDate":"2026-02-19","recordCreationDate":"2003-06-19","availableToBook":false}}