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(American, 1861–1890)

Brittany Town Morning, Larmor

1884
Oil on canvas
Image: 14 x 22 in. (35.6 x 55.9 cm)
Frame: 25 x 33 1/8 in. (63.5 x 84.1 cm)
Credit LineTerra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection
Object number1991.1
SignedLower left: DENNIS M. BUNKER/Larmor/1884
Interpretation
Caught in the glare of high morning light, the clustered stone buildings of a French village spread across the view in Dennis Miller Bunker’s Brittany Town Morning, Larmor. Throwing the walls of the buildings into contrasting darkness, steep slate roofs reflect the diffused brightness of a silvery sky punctuated by the dark forms of birds in flight. They circle around a tall church steeple, which provides a strong vertical counterweight to the emphatic horizontality of the composition. The almost monochrome bands of sky and buildings in the upper half of the picture set off the brilliant greens of the fields in the lower half. In the near ground at the right, a woman wearing a traditional Breton lace headdress spreads laundry to dry, adding touches of bright red, white, and blue to the scene. This note of everyday incident and the smoke curling from two chimneys just below the dominant church spire suggest the peaceful immutability of a rural way of life regulated by practical necessity and religious faith. Yet Bunker’s image is less a narrative interpretation of the setting than a record of the purely optical effects of looking into brilliant light as it strikes such varied surfaces as slate roofs and verdant grasses, accentuating tonal contrasts as well as color.

Bunker had painted landscapes outdoors in and around New York City, Long Island, and Nantucket, Massachusetts, before traveling to Paris in 1882 to enroll in the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts. In his studies there, he absorbed the conventions of fashionable studio portraiture, later demonstrated in The Mirror (TF 1999.22). Like many other American art students in Paris, however, during summer vacations and on excursions from Paris he sought rural locales in which to indulge his interest in landscape. Bunker was among many artists who reveled in the soft, diffused quality of the natural light of northern France, which lends a subtle gray tonality to outdoor colors.

Larmor (now known as Larmor-Plage) is a small harbor town on Brittany’s southern coast dominated by its medieval church, Notre Dame de Larmor. Notwithstanding its picturesque architecture and old-fashioned ways, the town attracted few American tourists when the twenty-three-year-old Bunker visited for the first time in July 1884, following his friends Kenneth R. Cranford (1857–?) and Charles Adams Platt (1861–1933). In contrast to the subdued local color seen in such earlier canvases as Lacroix-St.Ouen, Oise (TF 1987.11), Bunker’s Larmor paintings demonstrate a greater attention to light and atmosphere. Bunker made as many as six views of Larmor, including several showing the town at a distance, from the road to Pont-Aven to the east. This work is the largest and most monumental of the group. Believing that brushwork should be exposed rather than hidden, Bunker rendered the sky and ground with vigorous strokes. The crisply rendered structures in the image’s contrasting middle third suggest the influence of the early paintings of French artist Camille Corot (1796–1875), which the young American is said to have admired. In its particular attention to light and atmosphere, Brittany Town Morning, Larmor marks Bunker’s decisive turn toward an impressionist aesthetic he would fully display in landscapes painted around Medford, Massachusetts, later in the decade.
ProvenanceThe artist
Sotheby Parke-Bernet, New York, New York, April 28, 1977, lot 153
Spanierman Gallery, New York, New York, 1978
Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Spencer, 1978
Spanierman Gallery, New York, New York
Terra Foundation for the Arts Collection, Chicago, Illinois, 1991
Exhibition History
Dennis Miller Bunker Exhibition, Noyes & Blakeslee Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts, 1885, no. 10.

Sixtieth Annual Exhibition, National Academy of Design, New York, New York, April 16–May 16, 1885, no. 192.

Dennis Miller Bunker (1861–1890) Rediscovered, New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, Connecticut (organizer). Venues: New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, Connecticut, April 1–May 7, 1978; Davis & Long Gallery, New York, New York, June 7–June 30, 1978. [exh. cat.]

In Nature's Ways: American Landscape Painting of the Late Nineteenth Century, Norton Gallery of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida (organizer). Venues: Norton Gallery of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida, February 21–April 12, 1987; Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, September 10–November 1, 1987. [exh. cat.]

The Spencer Collection of American Art: An Exhibition of Works for Sale, Spanierman Gallery, New York, New York (organizer). Venue: Spanierman Gallery, New York, New York, June 13–29, 1990. [exh. cat.]

Impressions de toujours: les peintres américains en France, 1865–1915 (Lasting Impressions: American Painters in France, 1865–1915), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, June 1–November 1, 1992; April 1–October 31, 1993; April 1-October 30, 1994. [exh. cat.]

Dennis Miller Bunker: American Impressionist, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts (organizer). Venues: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, January 13–June 4, 1995; Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, July 1–September 24, 1995; Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado, October 14–December 31, 1995. [exh. cat.]

Collection Cameo, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, February 1996.

Giverny: une impression américaine (Giverny, An American Impression), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, April 1–November 1, 1998.

Ville et campagne: les artistes américains, 1870–1920 (The City and the Country: American Perspectives, 1870–1920), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, April 1–July 15, 1999. [exh. cat.]

Héroïque et le quotidien: les artistes américains, 1820–1920 (The Extraordinary and the Everyday: American Perspectives, 1820–1920), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, April 1–November 30, 2001. [exh. cat.]

D'une colonie à une collection: le Musée d'Art Américain Giverny fête ses dix ans (From a Colony to a Collection: Celebrating the Tenth Anniversary of the Musée d'Art Américain Giverny), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, March 30–June 16, 2002.

The People Work: American Perspectives, 1840–1940 (Le Travail à l'oeuvre: les artistes américains, 1840–1940), Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venues: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, March 15–May 25, 2003; Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, June 8–August 17, 2003. [exh. cat.]

Copley to Cassatt: Masterworks from the Terra Collection, New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, Connecticut, and Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, Connecticut, September 5–December 7, 2003.

A Narrative of American Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, February 13–October 31, 2004.

Expanded Galleries of American Art with Loans from the Terra Foundation for American Art Collection, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, April 15, 2005–February 2006.

Americans in Paris 1860–1900. National Gallery, London, England and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachussetts in association with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York (organizers). Venues: National Gallery, London, England, February 22–May 21, 2006; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, June 25–September 24, 2006; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, October 16, 2006–January 28, 2007. [exh. cat]

Galleries of American Art with Loans from the Terra Foundation for American Art Collection, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, September 2007–February 2019.

The Studio of Nature, 1860-1910: The Terra Collection in Context (L’atelier de la Nature, 1860-1910. Invitation à la Terra Collection). Terra Foundation for American Art with the Musée des Impressionnismes Giverny (organizers). Venue: Musée des Impressionnismes Giverny, France, September 12, 2020–January 3, 2021. [exh. cat. in French]

Published References
The Magazine Antiques 112:6 (December 1977): 1058. Ill. p. 1058 (color).

Ferguson, Charles B. Dennis Miller Bunker (1861-1890) Rediscovered. (exh. cat., New Britain Museum of American Art). New Britain, Connecticut: New Britain Museum of American Art, 1978. Text pp. 7–8; no. 10 (color).

Goldenthal, Jolene. "'Forgotten' Impressionist." Hartford Courant 2 (April 1978). Ill. p. 2G.

Gerdts, William H. American Impressionism. New York: Abbeville Press, 1984. Text p. 85; ill. no. 85, p. 84 (color).

Porat, Efrat Adler. Dennis Miller Bunker (1861-1890). Master Thesis, Tufts University, 1984. Text p. 93; ill. p. 210.

Weber, Bruce and William H. Gerdts. In Nature's Ways: American Landscape Painting of the Late Nineteenth Century. (exh. cat., Norton Gallery of Art). West Palm Beach, Florida: Norton Gallery of Art, 1987. Text pp. 12–13; fig. 6, p. 46 (color).

Ferguson, Charles B. et al. The Spencer Collection of American Art. (exh. cat., Spanierman Gallery). New York: Spanierman Gallery, 1990. Text p. 14; ill. p. 15 (color).

Gerdts, William H. et al. Lasting Impressions: American Painters in France, 1865–1915. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1992. Text pp. 40, 212, 214; pl. 51, p. 215 (color).

Gerdts, William H. et al. Impressions de toujours: les peintres américains en France, 1865–1915. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1992. Text pp. 40, 212, 214; pl. 51, p. 215 (color).

Hirshler, Erica E. Dennis Miller Bunker: American Impressionist. (exh. cat., Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). Boston, Massachusetts: Museum of Fine Arts, 1994. Text pp. 15, 25, 32–33, 171, 181 (checklist); cat. 17, p. 135 (color), detail p. 24 (color).

Morgan, Keith N. Shaping an American Landscape. (exh. cat., Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College). Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1995. Fig. 3.9, p. 59.

Brittany Town Morning, Larmor, Dennis Miller Bunker. Collection Cameo sheet, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, February 1996. Ill. (black and white).

Simeon, Jean-Claude. Le Voyage en France. Paris, France: J.C. Lattes, 1997. Text p. 179; ill. pp. 178–79 (color).

 Cartwright, Derrick R. The City and the Country: American Perspectives, 1870–1920. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1999. Text p. 10, 23 (checklist); fig. 1, p. 10 (black & white).

Cartwright, Derrick R. Ville et campagne: les artistes américains, 1870–1920. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1999. Text p. 10, 23 (checklist); fig. 1, p. 10 (black & white).

Cartwright, Derrick R. The Extraordinary and the Everyday: American Perspectives, 1820–1920. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2001. Text p. 22 (checklist); ill. p. 39 (color).

Cartwright, Derrick R. L'Héroïque et le quotidian: les artistes américains, 1820–1920. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2001. Text p. 22 (checklist); ill. p. 39 (color).

Bourguignon, Katherine M. and Elizabeth Kennedy. An American Point of View: The Daniel J. Terra Collection. Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2002. Text pp. 86, 192; ill. p. 87 (color), 192 (black & white).

Bourguignon, Katherine M. and Elizabeth Kennedy. Un regard transatlantique. La collection d'art américain de Daniel J. Terra. Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2002. Text pp. 86, 192; ill. p. 87 (color), 192 (black & white).

Adler, Kathleen et al. Americans in Paris, 1860–1900. (exh. cat. National Gallery of Art) London, England: National Gallery Company Limited, 2006. Text pp. 129, 133, 230; ill. cat. 66, p. 132 (color), p. 230 (color).

Lannée, André-Pierre and Alain Terras. “1884 – Trois artistes peintres américains à Larmor.” Les cahiers du pays de Plœmeur : Plœmeur, Larmor-Plage, Lorient No. 23 (December 2013): 22–28. Text pp. 22-23; ill. p. 22 (color).

Bourguignon, Katherine M., and Peter John Brownlee, eds. Conversations with the Collection: A Terra Foundation Collection Handbook. Chicago: Terra Foundation for American Art, 2018. Text p. 136; ill. p. 136 (color).

Bourguignon, Katherine and Valerie Reis. The Studio of Nature, 1860-1910: The Terra Collection in Context. (exh. cat, Terra Foundation for American Art with the Musée des Impressionnismes Giverny). Paris, France: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2020.  Ill. p.106-7 (detail); Pl. 49, p. 118 (color).

metadata embedded, 2020
Dennis Miller Bunker
1883
Metadata Embedded 2018
Dennis Miller Bunker
1890
Metadata Embedded, 2017
Dennis Miller Bunker
1876