Helen Mabel Trevor
, Irish, 1831-1900
Title
An Interior of a Breton CottageDate1892
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensions
63 x 46 cm
Signedlower right: Helen Mabel Trevor f.1892
Credit LineBequeathed, the Artist, 1900
Object numberNGI.501
Exhibition HistoryThe Peasant in French 19th Century Art, Dublin, 1980The Irish Impressionists, Irish Artists in France and Belgium, 1850-1914, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 9 October - 18 November 1984; Ulster Museum, Belfast, 1 February - 10 March 1985
French 19th and 20th Century Paintings from the National Gallery of Ireland: Corot to Picasso, Daimaru Museum, Tokyo, 5 September - 17 September 1996; Daimaru Museum, Kyoto, 10 October - 22 October 1996; Kawaguchiko Museum of Art, Yamanashi, 26 October - 2 December 1996; Daimaru Museum, Umeda,Osaka, 22 January - 9 February 1997; Aomori Municpal Gallery of Art, Aomori, 2 April - 20 April 1997
Label TextSolitary individuals engaged in everyday domestic tasks recur in paintings of provincial France in the late nineteenth century. In this case, an elderly Breton woman sits preparing vegetables, seemingly oblivious to her observer. The earthy palette is typical of the artist’s work. Having undertaken art training relatively late – she studied in London and Paris – Trevor approached her travels with enormous enthusiasm. In her recollections The Ramblings of an Artist, published in 1900, she recalled searching for ‘the new and the picturesque’ in Brittany, which she had first visited in 1881.