Village Street: Saint-Briac

Saint-Briac sits on the north coast of Brittany, between the bay of Mont-Saint-Michel and the bay of Saint-Brieuc, and from 1886 onward Bernard came back to it summer after summer. He lodged with the Lemasson family, who kept the village inn, and in July 1888 he painted an Adoration of the Shepherds straight onto the plaster of his bedroom wall on the first floor, four metres by two, with about twenty life-size figures. It was papered over and whitewashed, and today nothing of it is visible. In a letter he listed what he liked about the place: the big pink houses, the distant windmills with their crossed arms, the little white triangles of the women's coifs. The street he painted here now carries his name, the rue Émile Bernard.