Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

known as 'Les Aiguilles de Port-Coton', or 'needles', named for the spumes of froth and spray that are whipped up from the narrow space of sea between them. Crossing the Port-Goulphar and rounding this westernmost point we come to another rocky inlet featuring a pierced rock in the centre, known as 'La Roche Guibel' — which is now believed to be the actual subject of the Queensland Art Gallery's painting Roc Toul 1904-05, recently identified as such by former Director Raoul Mellish during a trip to the region. At the southernmost point of the island is yet another fantastic rocky cave, made famous by Alexandre Dumas père as the hiding place used by one of his three musketeers, Porthos, in the popular story published in 1844-45. Russell settled on the island in 1888, building a rather grand house at Goulphar on the 'côte sauvage' at the point where the small Goulphar creek empties into the sea. From his high perch Russell could look out onto the Adantic, but for his art he needed to develop a more intimate relationship with his preferred motifs — these strange rocks and the surrounding waters of the western seafront. There was nothing unique about Russell selecting the rocks of the 'côte sauvage' as a painterly motif. Well before this, romantic travellers and artists had sought out such subject matter as a site for emotional expression. Octave Penguilly-l'Haridon exhibited Les Petites Mouettes, Port-Donan (Small seagulls, Port-Donan) at the Salon of 1859, a work mentioned by Charles Baudelaire; Louis Leroy showed a watercolour at the Salon of 1853 called Grotte de la mer sauvage à Belle-Ile (Wild sea grotto at Belle-Ile) and Felix Roy made a number of lithographs of Belle-Ile in 1858. It was a time when island retreats were becoming fashionable for artists. The writer Victor Hugo had lived on Jersey, Auguste Renoir painted on Guernsey in the early 1880s, the critic Octave Mirbeau had a residence on the island of Noirmoutier and published an article on Belle-Ile in La revue indépendente in January 1887— so he almost certainly visited the island in 1886. The critic and later friend and interpreter 96 BROUGHT TO LIGHT: Australian Art 1850-1965