Armand Guillaumin (1841-1927)

From September 1891, Guillaumin made several journeys to Crozant, a small village on the Creuse, not far from Fresselines, where Monet had stayed for three months in the spring of 1889. 'In the whole valley of the Creuse, Crozant is unique, for it lies within the centre of a stretch of the river that passes through an intrusive flow of ferriferous granite which ages to soft brownish-pink... All Guillaumin's Crozant paintings were done within this area. While the rest of the valley of the Creuse is colourful, nowhere does it achieve the same richness that it does in the region of Crozant' (C. Gray, Armand Guillaumin, Conneticut, 1972, pp. 44-48).