A Street in Brittany

Painted in 1881 after Stanhope Forbes spent time in Brittany studying alongside other plein-air painters attracted to the region's austere rural life and photographic clarity of light, A Street in Brittany announced the direction that would define his career. Forbes had trained in London and Antwerp before going to Brittany, where the influence of Jules Bastien-Lepage's square-brush technique of painting directly from observation reinforced his commitment to outdoor painting. Brittany attracted British and American artists throughout the 1870s–1890s because its peasant communities appeared to offer an authentic, pre-industrial alternative to urban modernity. The Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool holds the work as an early example of the naturalist movement that Forbes would soon transplant to Cornwall, founding the Newlyn School — one of the most influential plein-air colonies in British art history.

The square-brush technique associated with Bastien-Lepage and the Newlyn School involves loading square-tipped brushes with paint and laying them flatly onto the canvas to build mosaic-like surfaces of consistent tonal patches. This allows the painter to record light effects rapidly while maintaining formal control.