Douarnenez in Sunshine

Maxime Maufra · 1897

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

59.7 × 73.7 cm (23 1/2 × 29 in.); Framed: 79.3 × 92.8 × 5.8 cm (31 3/16 × 36 1/2 × 2 1/4 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Impressionism

Douarnenez in Sunshine captures the luminous energy of the Breton harbour town with a directness that still feels alive more than a century after Maufra put brush to canvas. Maxime Maufra was a central figure in the Post-Impressionist circle around Pont-Aven, working alongside Gauguin and absorbing the group's bold use of colour and simplified form, though he remained devoted to landscape and the natural light of the Brittany coast throughout his career. Where many of his contemporaries pushed toward abstraction, Maufra stayed anchored to place, and this 1897 work shows his gift for rendering the particular quality of Atlantic sunlight — the way it bleaches stone and shimmers off water without flattening the scene. He painted Douarnenez and its harbour repeatedly, drawn back to the interplay of fishing boats, reflected sky, and the low golden haze that settles over the bay on clear days. The Art Institute of Chicago holds the original as part of its broader collection of French Post-Impressionist work. This hand-painted oil reproduction is executed on canvas using traditional techniques, preserving the layered brushwork and tonal warmth that give the original its sense of a single, unhurried afternoon caught in paint.