The Cliffs at Beg-ar-Fry, Saint-Jean-du-Doigt (1895): Art, History and Details

The Cliffs at Beg-ar-Fry, Saint-Jean-du-Doigt (1895) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Maxime Maufra (French, 1861–1918).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Maxime Maufra was initially an amateur artist, but in 1883 he gave up a career in business to devote himself entirely to painting. He traveled throughout Normandy and Britany painting sea- and landscapes. During a visit to Pont-Aven in northwestern France in 1890 he met Paul Gauguin and a group of young artists who were inspired by Gauguin’s approaches to color and composition in his art. In particular, Maufra began to translate forms into flat planes of bold color arranged in decorative patterns as seen in this seascape of the Breton coast. Perhaps the most striking aspect of this painting is the way the artist framed the composition at the left with the view of a steep cliff.

Object facts

• Title: The Cliffs at Beg-ar-Fry, Saint-Jean-du-Doigt
• Date: 1895
• Creator attribution: Maxime Maufra (French, 1861–1918)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on fabric
• Dimensions: Framed: 66.5 x 80 x 4.5 cm (26 3/16 x 31 1/2 x 1 3/4 in.); Unframed: 60 x 73.3 cm (23 5/8 x 28 7/8 in.)
• Collection: Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960
• Department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1966.382

Collection credit

Gift of Ellen Wade Chinn, Elizabeth Wade Sedgwick and J. H. Wade III in memory of their mother Irene Love Wade

Further reading listed by the museum

• “Annual Report for 1966.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 54, no. 6 (June 1967): 159–197.
• “Year in Review.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 54, no. 10 (December 1967): 302–346.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1969. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1969.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.