The artist
YAN’ DARGENT, A SINGULAR AND ENDEARING ARTIST
Yan’ Dargent is a singular Breton painter. He was born in Brittany, whereas Breton-inspired painting is mainly the work of painters who came from elsewhere to discover the region. He is a champion of the landscapes of his native Léon, but also of the Crozon peninsula. He painted the legends of his childhood, decorated numerous churches and was a renowned illustrator. A prolific creator, he also designed stained-glass windows and decorative objects.
“Among the thousands of painters who travelled the length and breadth of Brittany in the second half of the 19th century, Yan’ Dargent occupies a special place, not only because of his origins in Leonard, but above all because of the interest and originality of his sources of inspiration. Throughout his career, he never ceased to bear witness to his attachment to the land of his childhood through his evocations of legend, history and landscapes.
Near the museum dedicated to him, the parish enclosure of Saint-Servais is an incomparable and exceptional ensemble that allows us to appreciate the themes of his religiously inspired paintings.
Yan’ Dargent, an eminent figure in Breton painting, deserves the greatest attention from all Bretons.”
André Cariou – Head curator and former director of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Quimper,
art historian, author of numerous works on Breton painting.
“When realism takes over with Millet and Courbet, “Un miracle de saint Houardon”, “La mort du dernier barde” and “Les lavandières de la nuit” reveal Yan’ Dargent’s profound originality in Paris.”
Denise Delouche, art historian, university professor, author of a doctoral thesis on the painters of Brittany before Paul Gauguin, author of numerous works on the history of painting and painters in Brittany.
From Jean-Edouard Dargent to Yan'Dargent
Jean-Edouard Dargent was born in Saint-Servais en Léon on October 15, 1824.
Nothing predestined him to become the artist Yan’ Dargent. His father, Claude Dargent, was a corroyeur from Lorraine. At the Ti-Robée post house, named after the owner Pierre Robée, he meets the innkeeper’s daughter, Clémentine, and marries her.
Jean-Edouard was less than two years old when he lost his mother. His father set up a new home in Landerneau. Jean-Edouard was raised by his grandparents, who certainly called him Yann. He was educated by his uncle, a schoolteacher in Plouaret, then at the Collège de Léon in Saint-Pol-de-Léon.
At the age of 16, he found employment with a public works company in Brest. Around 1844, he moved to Troyes, where he worked on the construction of a railway line. It was there that he made a decisive encounter: he befriended the landscape painter Jules Schitz, teacher and director of the town’s drawing school. From then on, he sought to make a living from his pencil and brush.
Le Progrès en marche © Musee Yan’ Dargent St Servais Photo Albert Pennec
Saint Houardon HSB © Musee Yan’ Dargent St Servais Photo Albert Pennec
The painter of Breton legend
From 1850, he exhibited regularly at the Salon in Paris. An institution where the works exhibited are rigorously selected. He finally came to prominence in 1859 with the painting Saint Houardon, purchased by Emperor Napoleon III and soon to be installed in the church of the same name in Landerneau.
Then, in 1861, it was the Lavandières de la nuit that proved popular, notably with Théophile Gautier: the following year, the painting was exhibited in London and sold in Scotland. Today, it is the artist’s best-known painting, particularly for his anthropomorphic and zoomorphic trees. In recent years, it has been exhibited in Paris (at the Galeries nationales du Grand Palais in 2006-2007, “Il était une fois Walt Disney, aux sources de l’art des studios Disney”), Lille (at the Palais des beaux-arts in 2022, “La forêt magique”), Landerneau (at the Fonds Hélène et Edouard Leclerc in 2023, “Sur les traces de Tolkien et de l’imaginaire médiéval, peintures et dessins de John Howe”)…
A renowned illustrator
Yan’ Dargent earns his living as an artist, not by painting but by illustrating. He was one of the most renowned illustrators of the second half of the 19th century. From 1856 onwards, his name appeared regularly in illustrated newspapers: Le Magasin catholique illustré, La Vie à la campagne, Le Magasin pittoresque, La Chasse illustrée, Tour du monde, Bibliothèque des merveilles, Musée des familles…
Then, from 1863 onwards, he illustrated a wide range of books in all genres: fairy tales, popular science, religion, history… On his own, he illustrated some fifty books, totalling over five thousand drawings, and contributed to another one hundred and fifty. A considerable and sought-after output. He illustrates fairy tales by Grimm, Andersen, Perrault, Laboulaye and Assolant, where he enjoys drawing children and trees.
The illustrator Gustave Doré is remembered for his work on some of the world’s greatest texts: Rabelais, Don Quixote and the Bible: Doré triumphed with the publication of Dante’s Inferno in 1861, but waited until 1868 to have the other two parts of Dante’s Divine Comedy, Purgatory and Paradise, published. Dargent probably didn’t have Doré’s ambition, or his publishers didn’t have it for him. He did, however, measure up to his rival with his Divine Comedy, published by the Garnier brothers in 1879 in French, then in 1888 in Spanish and in 1908 in Brazilian. His illustration of La Vie des Saints by Mgr Paul Guérin, in 1884, is also particularly noteworthy.
Divine Comedy Dante © Musee Yan’ Dargent St Servais Photo Albert Pennec
The Death of Salaün ar Foll, 1895. Oil on canvas, 250 x 500 cm. Collection Musée Yan’ Dargent, Saint-Servais © Albert Pennec
Painter of the sacred
In 1865, Yan’ Dargent bought a residence at Créac’h André in Saint-Pol-de-Léon. He stayed there more and more often with his wife, Eugénie Mathieu, a musician.
In 1869, he began decorating the Saint-Servais ossuary: murals and stained-glass cartoons. This was to be his calling card for a more ambitious decorative program: the murals of Quimper Cathedral, completed from 1871 to 1883. In addition to the church and ossuary of Saint-Servais and the cathedral of Saint-Corentin in Quimper, he decorated many other religious buildings with murals, oil on canvas or cartoons for stained glass windows executed by several stained-glass artists. The neoclassical Procession des saints in the church of Saint-Houardon in Landerneau shows his great ambition.
Yan’ Dargent is certainly most original in his depiction of Breton figures of faith: among the murals in Quimper, we admire Père Maunoir receiving the gift of the Breton language, Le Vénérable Dom Michel Le Nobletz preaching to a crowd in Brittany, and Conversation extatique de saint Corentin et de saint Primel. At Saint-Servais, La Mort de Salaün ar Foll is also remarkable.
Landscaping in Brittany
His father-in-law and then his wife both died in 1885.
From then on, he rarely went to Paris. He drew on the motif at Brézal en Saint-Servais, on the Léonarde coast or on the Crozon peninsula, and then resumed his studies in the studio.
The themes and motifs are recurrent: children playing on cliffs, trees, returning from the fields, stormy skies. His landscapes bear witness to a deep attachment to Brittany.
The herd returns under a stormy sky HD © Musee Yan’ Dargent St Servais Photo Albert Pennec
A rediscovered originality
When he died, he was buried at Saint-Servais. Then he fell into oblivion.
Religious paintings are destroyed or put away. The slow rediscovery of Yan’ Dargent came with Denise Delouche’s thesis on Painters of Brittany before Gauguin in 1975, an exhibition of illustrated books presented by Jean Berthou at the Bibliothèque municipale de Brest in 1976, a retrospective exhibition in Landerneau in 1989, the opening of the Yan’ Dargent museum in Saint-Servais in 1991 on the initiative of Jean Berthou and the municipality, and an exhibition at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Quimper in 1999.
Today, the man who has so celebrated the legends and landscapes of his native land finally sees himself loved in return by the Bretons.
expo YD illustrateur de livres BM Brest 1976 © Musee Yan’ Dargent St Servais Photo Albert Pennec.
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SELECTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Jean Berthou, Yan’ Dargent, Héraut de la basse Bretagne, Editions Coop Breizh, 2014.
- jean Berthou, Yan’ Dargent, illustrator (1824-1899), AMYD, 2002.
- André Cariou, Dominique Radufe, Yan’ Dargent 1824-1899, Musée des beaux-arts de Quimper, 1999.
- Jean Berthou, les lavandières de la nuit, catalog of the exhibition presented at the Musée de Saint-Servais in 1992-1993, then at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Quimper, AMYD, 1993.
- Jean Berthou, Yan’ Dargent chez lui à Saint-Servais, AMYD, 1991.
- Jean Berthou, Maurice Foucher, Rémy Bouguennec, Dominique Radufe, Jean-Pierre Le Bihan, Yan’ Dargent 1824-1899, Landerneau exhibition catalog, 1989.
Long-form writings on Yan’ Dargent published during his lifetime are rare. Here are two of note:
Bayard E., “Yan’ Dargent”, in L’Illustration et les illustrateurs, Paris, 1897, pp. 286-296.YD L Illustration et les illustrateurs E Bayard 1898
Hanciau G., Yan’ Dargent, peintre et dessinateur breton, sa vie, ses oeuvres, Librairie des imprimeurs réunies, collection “Nos artistes contemporains”, Paris, 1889. Courtesy of Ville de Brest, Médiathèque F.M. – les Capucins, FBx B704.https://bibliotheque.idbe.bzh/data/cle_233/yandargent_1824-1899.pdf
Yan’ Dargent at his work table. Pencil drawing by his son Ernest Dargent. Yan’ Dargent Museum Collection © Musée Yan’ Dargent Saint-Servais – Photo Albert Pennec