Paul Flaubert
La Place du Bourg
Oil on panel

Signed lower left Paul Flaubert, titled on the reverse. 8 x 10 inches (20 x 25 cm), the frame 14 x 16 inches (36 x 41 cm). Carved wood frame, dark waxed finish. Good condition.

Nothing in the square is painted flat except one red shopfront. The leaves overhead, the leaves on the ground and the light between the houses are all laid in with short broken touches of rust, pink, straw and grey, and the eye travels the length of the street to reach that single block of red.

Two tall trunks rise at the left and frame the view. Between them the street runs back past pale houses, with small figures walking under the trees and two men standing together in the road near the shop. The paint is thick and dry, dragged and dabbed so the surface catches the light in ridges, and the sky shows only as scraps of white through the leaves.