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Lot Essay
Gustave Loiseau’s 1908 landscape depicts a country house built circa 1840 and converted into an hotel in 1870. It operated until 1918, when its proprietor and namesake, Ernestine Aubourg, passed away. The inn had become an important gathering place for artists and writers who traveled to Saint-Jouin, in Normandy. Aubourg was known as “La Belle Ernestine,” and her domain was the Auberge de la Belle Ernestine. Born into a family of hoteliers, she remained a fixture at hers from when she purchased it until her death, always smiling and greeting guests in the front garden as she grew old alongside the building. Her distinguished visitors included Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, Gustave Courbet, Alexandre Dumas, Claude Monet, Jacques Offenbach, and even the Queen of Spain, who visited three times.
Perhaps no one was more enchanted with Aubourg than the French author Guy de Maupassant, who immortalized his hostess in his 1888 psycho-realist novel Pierre et Jean, in which his characters visit the inn and meet its keeper, who is known by the pseudonym, “La Belle Alphonsine.” Maupassant described the setting in more detail in an article in a Parisian literary periodical: “The entrance to a country mansion leads to an old and pretty house, decorated by climbing plants. Opposite to it is a beautiful vegetable garden, and further, separated by a hedge, a grassy courtyard, shaded by a roof of apple trees. The hotelier is waiting outside her door, laughing and always fresh. She is a strong girl, mature now, still beautiful, of a powerful and simple beauty, a girl of the fields, a girl of the earth, a vigorous peasant woman” (quoted in “La belle Ernestine,” in Gil Blas, 1 August 1882).
Loiseau’s L'hôtel de Mademoiselle Ernestine, Saint-Jouin (Finistère) brings Maupassant’s passage to life, and the painter presumably stayed at the inn while visiting Etretat in 1908. Here, Loiseau captured the Hôtel in bright overhead sunlight, partially hidden behind overburdened fruit trees which he has described with thick impasto. Greenery, conjured with thick, trellis-like brushstrokes, covers the sides of the building. A woman—presumably La Belle Ernestine—stands guard at the hedge, smiling, and welcoming viewers into the vibrant landscape.
Perhaps no one was more enchanted with Aubourg than the French author Guy de Maupassant, who immortalized his hostess in his 1888 psycho-realist novel Pierre et Jean, in which his characters visit the inn and meet its keeper, who is known by the pseudonym, “La Belle Alphonsine.” Maupassant described the setting in more detail in an article in a Parisian literary periodical: “The entrance to a country mansion leads to an old and pretty house, decorated by climbing plants. Opposite to it is a beautiful vegetable garden, and further, separated by a hedge, a grassy courtyard, shaded by a roof of apple trees. The hotelier is waiting outside her door, laughing and always fresh. She is a strong girl, mature now, still beautiful, of a powerful and simple beauty, a girl of the fields, a girl of the earth, a vigorous peasant woman” (quoted in “La belle Ernestine,” in Gil Blas, 1 August 1882).
Loiseau’s L'hôtel de Mademoiselle Ernestine, Saint-Jouin (Finistère) brings Maupassant’s passage to life, and the painter presumably stayed at the inn while visiting Etretat in 1908. Here, Loiseau captured the Hôtel in bright overhead sunlight, partially hidden behind overburdened fruit trees which he has described with thick impasto. Greenery, conjured with thick, trellis-like brushstrokes, covers the sides of the building. A woman—presumably La Belle Ernestine—stands guard at the hedge, smiling, and welcoming viewers into the vibrant landscape.