Rousseau-Decelle – The Bec du Hoc near Grandcamp

René A. Rousseau-Decelle
(1881 La Roche-sur-Yon – 1964 Préfailles)

LE BEC DU HOC NEAR GRANCAMP

Painted around 1910
Oil on canvas
46 x 66 cm

Signed lower right: Rousseau-Decelle

Rousseau-Decelle began his training as a painter at the Académie Julian under Bouguereau, Ferrier and Toudouze, three grand masters of Salon painting. He won the Prix de Rome, France’s award for particularly talented art students, in 1905 with the historical painting ‘Joan of Arc in Prison’. For his most famous painting, ‘La Chambre des Députés’, which was purchased by the state, he portrayed the 500 members of parliament. None of this gives any indication of what a talented landscape painter he was. But this depiction of the Bec du Hoc near Grandcamp in Normandy emphasises precisely that. Many important Impressionist painters, such as Monet, had already captured the overwhelming Normandy coastline on canvas before him. In 1885, George Seurat painted the Bec du Hoc, which juts out bizarrely into the sea, in a pointillist style. Rousseau-Decelle depicted it in a loose, impressionistic style, placing great emphasis on the colourfulness of the sea, the light and the atmosphere, and adding the view of the magnificent cliffs to the rock. Unlike Seurat, he was not interested in experimenting with a new style using a motif, but in the beauty of the motif itself.