Fog

Charles Cottet's 'Fog' (1904) is an atmospheric subject by one of the most technically distinctive French painters of the Symbolist-Naturalist generation — his engagement with the Breton coast and its specific atmospheric conditions (the fog, mist, and storm of the Atlantic-facing Finistère coast) gave his work a quality of dramatic atmospheric intensity quite different from the more comfortable Impressionist treatments of the Normandy coast. His Breton subjects depicted the fishing communities of the far west of France as living within conditions of elemental severity.

Cottet renders the fog with the dark, dramatic palette and thick, confident brushwork that characterized his Breton subjects — the fog's specific visual quality (the dissolution of form into grey atmosphere, the particular quality of visibility within the fog's embrace) depicted with the directness of close observational experience. His dark tonal approach gave even the fog subject a quality of dramatic weight that contrasted with the lighter, more optimistic treatments of atmospheric dissolution by the Impressionists.