The Pardon of Saint-Anne-La-Palud

Boudin described this scene in a letter to his brother: "Imagine an immense plain… in the middle, a small gothic chapel surrounded by trees… around that a hundred tents made of white canvas… in open-air kitchens huge pots of boiling soup, incredible ragouts..." Rather than depict the sacred procession of the Pardon of Saint-Anne-la-Palud, a major religious festival in Brittany that Boudin witnessed during a visit to the region in 1857, the artist chose to sketch the animated preparations for the celebratory picnic with the Chapel of Saint-Anne-la-Palud in the background. Boudin ultimately selected this subject for his first major painting and Salon début in 1859. Although Charles Baudelaire praised the picture, the painter was unsatisfied, writing in his journal that the finished canvas lacked "grandeur, suppleness, and novelty." This drawing retains the vitality that Boudin feared lost in the final work.