Rating and value of paintings by Virginie Demont Breton

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Cote et valeur de l'artiste Virginie Demont Breton   

Virginie Demont Breton is a well-known artist among lovers of naturalistic canvases. Her works are now fetching higher prices under the auctioneer's hammer.

His oils on canvas are particularly prized, especially by French buyers, and the price at which they sell on the art market ranges from €20 to €383,920, a significant delta but one that speaks volumes about the value that can be attributed to the artist's works.

In 2019, his oil on canvas Femme de pêcheur venant baigner ses enfants, dating from 1881, sold for €383,920, while it was estimated at between €87,250 and €130,880. Its value is stable. 

Order of value from a simple work to the most prestigious

Artist's style and technique Virginie Demont Breton    

It is precisely in this tension between realism and poetic exaltation that Virginie Demont-Breton's unique style and technique lie:

In an artist steeped in the academic tradition, how do you explain her ability to capture the raw power of the elements and the intensity of human emotion?

The daughter of renowned painter Jules Breton, she inherited an impeccable technical mastery, but her approach goes beyond mere virtuosity.

His compositions, often monumental, combine rigorous precision of drawing with a vibrant palette, where the bright hues of the sea skies mingle with deep shadows, sculpting powerful, expressive figures. 

Frequently working on large formats, Demont-Breton favors subjects borrowed from the daily lives of fishermen and their families, but without ever falling into simple illustration.

His firm, masterful touch plays on contrasts of light to magnify muscular bodies and faces marked by wind and sea.

The rendering of textures, whether skin, clothing or raging waves, testifies to meticulous attention to detail, while at the same time revealing a deeply empathetic sensitivity.

Through her art, she manages to elevate these everyday scenes to the level of a visual epic, blending realism and idealization in a striking balance.

Virginie Demont Breton's career   

Virginie Dumont Breton (1859 - 1935) was a French artist born in Pas de Calais.  

Virginie Demont-Breton found her first inspiration in a family universe steeped in art.

Daughter of Jules Bretona painter renowned for his rural scenes, she grew up in an atmosphere conducive to creativity, where drawing and painting were at the heart of daily life.

Very early on, she showed promising talent and decided to follow in her father's footsteps, moving towards a luminous realism imbued with sincerity. Unlike her father, she draws her subjects from the maritime world, fascinated by the harshness and poetry of fishermen's lives. 

Her marriage to the painter Adrien Demont reinforced this anchorage. Together, they settled in Wissant, a village on the Opal Coast, whose wild landscapes and inhabitants would inspire much of her work.

It's here that she paints vibrant scenes of life, sensitively capturing the daily lives of seafaring families, their joys as well as their trials.

Her paintings, both realistic and profoundly human, won her rapid recognition in the salons, where she received several medals. 

In addition to her artistic work, Virginie is actively committed to the role of women in the art world.

When she became president of the Union of Women Painters and Sculptors, she campaigned for their visibility in exhibitions and for their recognition in a field still largely dominated by men.

Her life reflects a rare balance: she combines an artistic career, feminist commitment and family life, while remaining faithful to her passion for the sea and its inhabitants.

Virginie Demont-Breton thus embodies the image of an accomplished artist, rooted in her time but resolutely turned towards wider horizons.

Focus on Shrimp Peelers, Virginie Demont-Breton

Virginie Demont-Breton's painting Les Éplucheuses de crevettes (1887) reveals the depth of her insight into the daily lives of fishermen: how do you transform a simple, familiar scene into a work of such emotional intensity?

In this painting, the women, seated on wooden stools, are absorbed in their task. Their skilful hands skin the shrimp with almost mechanical precision, while their faces, serious and concentrated, reflect the fatigue of a hard, laborious life. 

The choice of composition is remarkably effective. Virginie places her figures in the foreground, almost at eye level, creating an immediate proximity with the viewer.

The soft, diffused light, probably that of a foggy morning on the coast, envelops the figures and softens their features, while accentuating the contrast between the rosy flesh of the hands and shrimp and the neutral tones of the clothes and décor.

The sea, barely visible in the background, remains suggested, like a whisper, reminding us that this daily labor is intimately linked to the elements. 

Beyond technical virtuosity, the artist's tenderness for his subjects shines through. The aim is not to idealize the scene, but to render with accuracy and dignity the weight of these repeated gestures, the wear and tear of these simple yet essential lives.

Les Éplucheuses de crevettes is more than a genre scene: it's an ode to resilience and the discreet beauty of ordinary work, which Virginie Demont-Breton, with her humanist sensibility, elevates to the status of a silent epic.

Virginie Demont Breton's imprint on her period

In the end, Virginie Demont-Breton's ability to reconcile realism and emotion is what makes her such an essential figure of her time: how, in an environment still largely dominated by men, did she manage to impose such a personal vision, while remaining rooted in the major currents of the time?

His scenes of maritime life, imbued with dignity and simplicity, contrast with the great academic compositions of Jean-Léon Gérôme or Alexandre Cabanel, whose mythological or historical subjects dominated official salons.

Where these painters focus on heroic or idealized narratives, Demont-Breton chooses the everyday life of fishermen, with a sincerity that brings his work closer to that of Jules Bastien-Lepage, who sang the praises of the rural world, or Rosa Bonheur, who sublimated peasant life. 

But it's her take on the female condition that really sets her apart.

Where Bastien-Lepage focuses on peasants at work and Bonheur magnifies animals, Demont-Breton places women at the heart of his work, emphasizing their central role in the maritime economy and family life.

With this approach, she moves away from simple genre painting to achieve a universal scope.

As president of the Union des femmes peintres et sculpteurs, she also worked for the recognition of women artists, following in the footsteps of such figures as Berthe Morisot or Mary Cassattalthough her style remained faithful to realism.

Far from taking a back seat to the great names of her time, Virginie Demont-Breton imposes an art where simple life becomes a source of greatness, where each scene, each character, finds a silent but irresistible force.

Knowing the value of a work

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