NEW YORK, NY.- It is often fascinating to look at artists and find out what inspires them. Some are inspired by nature, others by family and friends, many are often inspired by political change or unrest. Part of our attraction to art is likely that artists often translate their emotion and opinions into a tangible picture for us to see. Something that for most people is internalized or only expressed by words, these talented souls can express in a visual form. Their genius and our limitation are often why we are drawn to their work. The viewer can be pulled to their images of family, war, poverty – whatever is touching our own heart. However, these artists must first find their own stimulation to create these works, and at the end of the 19th century, it was for some artists Le Pouldu.
In the late 1800’s, the Paris Salon often drew half a million visitors setting the commercial and aesthetic taste in the Western world. It was habitually rigid and specific about what was accepted and for any young artist acceptance into the Salon was the ultimate prize. Next to this yearly spectacle was a budding international artist community who were in Paris to learn from the great French painters of the day. William Sergeant Kendall was one of these international student/artists. The young American was just 19 when he arrived in Paris and together with his friend and fellow artist John Lambert, he also did what many other young artists of that day did and escaped to Brittany for long summers.
Brittany became an unusually trendy place for 19th century artists in France. In 1863 the Paris – Quimper railway opened. This provided access for artists to this untouched and rural land – it was inexpensive to stay and extremely inspiring to work there. At the end of the 19th century, no less than 30 artists spent their summers in Brittany. The Bretons were still an exceptionally unaffected people. Dressing in local clothing, farming, and quarrying – it was a simplistic lifestyle that many artists at this time craved as a break from the hard grit industrial atmosphere of Paris. These artists tended to convene in two or three places along the coast within about 25 miles of Quimper. The most noted was Pont–Aven lending its name to the Pont-Aven school of painters. However, the unspoilt quickly became spoilt, with too many artists and tourists milling around, and by 1889, a few artists (including Paul Gaugin) decided to move to Le Pouldu, a tiny rural hamlet of 150 people approximately 10 miles further away from Quimper than Pont-Aven.
In Le Pouldu as with other places in Brittany, Breton girls, as a way of earning extra income, often posed in traditional garb for artists in the area. The subject was popular at the Salon and so any young artist eager to make their mark (and start a professional career) focused heavily on these angelic, simplistic muses. Kendall used as his muse a beautiful local maid at the inn he stayed - nineteen-year-old Thérèse le Goué. Thérèse’s mother was dead and her father a vagrant. The innkeeper, Madame Destais, who was also her aunt, was an abusive supervisor. Antoinette the young girl next to Thérèse was an orphan whose mother, another maid at the inn, died during the painting of the work.
These paintings that Kendall did in this period in Le Pouldu give us a window into a young man’s soul and what inspired him. Our painting Saint Yves, Priez Pour Nous, was very unusual in its use of symbolist subject matter, as American painters were not prone to focusing on these subjects, but what really makes it so special is its compassion. Two destitute girls with nothing and no one to care for them, shown in all their despair. Yet, despite the sadness of the subject the painting itself is sublime. There is an unworldliness about it conveying the deep sympathy and care that Kendall had for his subjects. Other artists might have painted similar models, but none could convey the emotion Kendall was able when he painted this scene. We don’t know what drew Kendall into these characters, but we do see what kept him there. He was so obviously touched by their plight and circumstances. This painting would not be as powerful as it is without the inspiration that Kendall clearly received from these two girls. He ended up staying the winter of 1890/91 to finish the picture and demonstrating the adage “great art comes through great inspiration,” the picture won an Honourable Mention at the Paris Salon in 1891, a fairly unusual thing for any American artist of the time. The painting became Kendall’s showpiece and travelled to Germany, Chicago and beyond gaining attention and awards along the way.
Kendall’s emotion for these women didn’t stop there. He arranged for Thérèse to move to America and become the maid of his parents. Thérèse, it is said, continued to wear her traditional Breton garb, which must have been a site to be seen in Greenwich, New York! Unfortunately, the fate of Antoinette is not known, but we could guess that Kendall must have done his best to help her.
William Sergeant Kendall returned to America and went on to have an extremely successful career as an artist and teacher, gaining important commissions including painting the portrait of President William Howard Taft, but you do wonder if he still thought about those Breton girls and the inspiration they provided. His oeuvre after he returned to America mainly exists of paintings of his wife and daughters looking wistfully at the viewer in beautiful settings. Is he always trying to re-create his masterpiece or trying to forget the sadness he saw in Brittany? Or is he just painting what he loved – youthful beauty in any setting and it is us who are projecting our own emotions on to his work? Either way, he accomplished what he set out to do, create remarkable art that helps us express our own emotions.
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