Gaston La Touche
Gaston La Touche was born at Saint Cloud, near Paris. As a boy he took drawing lessons, which were discontinued when his family moved to Normandy during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. This was the extent of his formal training in art. When he returned to Paris, he opened a studio and spent many evenings at the Café de la Nouvelle-Athènes talking with other painters, such as Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas, who were willing to share their knowledge and experience with him. La Touche asked Manet to take him on as a student, but Manet declined, saying he had nothing to teach him other than to paint what he saw and to use a variety of colors. His primary subjects were working-class Parisians, painted in a depressing style that reflected the influence of the novelist Émile Zola.
Today's painting shows Brittany, off the coast of France, during a feast day of a patron saint, where pilgrims would dress in traditional clothing, seeking forgiveness from the priest (who is seen leading a horse with a woman and child on it) during a pilgrimage called pardons in 1896 in the evening.
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