"Langouste de Camaret" by Adolphe Keller (1862–1932)

Adolphe Keller (1862–1932)

Langouste de Camaret — Still Life with Lobster

Oil on canvas

A whole spiny lobster (langouste) presented on a large white oval dish occupies the foreground with commanding presence, its dark carapace rendered in deep burgundy, umber and ochre, animated by confident impastoed brushwork that captures the creature's textural complexity with evident relish. Behind, a generous mound of ripe tomatoes and a fig cluster about a dark wine bottle, a porcelain cup visible beyond — the assembled elements of a Breton kitchen table set against a warm, sun-drenched ochre ground. The composition is broadly handled in the Post-Impressionist manner.

Signed Adolphe Keller, 1932.

Note: Adolphe Keller was a French painter of Alsatian origin who worked extensively in Brittany, where the abundance of the Atlantic coast — its crustaceans, fish markets and harbour scenes — provided rich subject matter entirely in keeping with the robust naturalist tradition he inherited. Camaret, named in the inscription, refers to Camaret-sur-Mer, the celebrated fishing port on the Crozon Peninsula in Finistère, long associated with the lobster and crayfish trade and a destination favoured by artists of Keller's generation, among them Eugène Boudin and Lucien Simon..