A deeply moving painting by painter Emma Herland. A scene from everyday Breton life captured from life, just as she loved to depict it, featuring a little girl and her mother.
Oil on canvas

Signed lower left

Dimensions: 55 x 46 cm

With frame: 78 x 70 cm
Beautiful canal setting XIXth gilded with gold leaf.
Emma Herland, a work focused on the lives of the Bretons.
A female painter specializing in genre painting, her work is characterized by work centered on the life of the Bretons, seascapes, costumes and interiors.
Here, she depicts, on a country path, a crying little girl being consoled by her mother; her basket is overturned at her feet. The clogs of the two characters tell us about their social origins. In the distance, we can see a town and the steeple of its church.
The theme of childhood is very present in Emma Herland's painting.
There are many children in Emma Herland's painting, many little girls in beautiful costumes, children with their mothers, children in care.
Emma Herland, a sensitive female painter who possesses the rigor of academic style.
Emma Herland highlights her artistic qualities, her sensitivity and her mastery of light effects and colors.

Here we can appreciate the quality and detail of the little girl's costume as well as the rendering of the pretty light of the sky.
Biography
Born in Cherbourg, Emma Herland made her career in Brittany in Finistère, which she discovered when her father, a naval pharmacist, was transferred to Brest.
In 1884, she moved to Concarneau, where she lived on the town hall square, then on the quayside of Aiguillon and then at the Kerael villa on the cornice. Around 1920, she left Concarneau to live in Quimper, where she bought a house at 13 rue Pen ar Steir. She was one of the town's leading figures. Since 1914, she has been a member of the museum commission.
She discovered and learned painting from Georges, Alexandre Fischer, Benjamin Constant, and Jules Lefebvre during her stay in Paris at the Académie Julian in 1887-1888.
She will not miss an opportunity to show her works.
She exhibited regularly at various Breton salons, in Brest, Rennes, Nantes, Vannes, Saint Brieuc as well as in Laval, Angers, Orléans, Versailles and especially in Paris where she made her debut at the Salon des Artistes français in 1879 until 1920. She was awarded several times.
Ambitious and energetic, she was one of the first female painters to be able to make a living from her painting, which allowed her to help her sister and four brothers while remaining single.
She died in Quimper in 1947.
Bibliographie:
• Emma Herland, woman painter in Brittany, [exhibition catalog], Pont-Aven Museum, 2009.
• Denise Delouche, “Emma Herland, painter in Brittany (1855-1947)”, in Memoirs of the Society of History and Archaeology of Brittany. SHAB, Vol. 77, 1999.
Museums:
• Quimper,

• Laval,

• Morlaix,

• Saint-Brieuc,

• Vitré Castle.