Didier BreteauProvence in colour

L'Atelier

Commission a painting

Once or twice a year, the studio accepts a private commission — a family home, a favourite village, the place a life turned on. Not a copy of a photograph, but that place remembered in the light of the Midi, in Breteau's own hand.

The process

How a commission comes to be

  1. 01

    A conversation

    It begins with a letter and, in time, a conversation — the place, what it means to you, the season and the hour you carry in your memory. There is no form long enough for this; we simply talk.

  2. 02

    The studio decides

    Breteau accepts only what he feels he can paint truly. If the place speaks to him, he agrees a size, a medium and a season, and names a price. A deposit reserves a place in the year's short list.

  3. 03

    Painted from the light

    He works the way he always has — slowly, from life or from the deepest study of a place, and only at first light or the last hour. A commission is finished when it is finished, not before.

  4. 04

    Delivered by hand

    The finished canvas is signed, documented and delivered — framed to your wishes, and, where the journey allows, placed on your wall by the studio itself.

What the studio is asked for most

  • Family homes and the gardens around them
  • A favourite village, seen at the hour you remember it
  • The place a proposal, a marriage or a farewell happened
  • Landscapes of Provence, the Côte d'Azur and beyond

Contact

Begin a commission

Tell us a little of the place and what it means to you. We reply to every serious enquiry, by hand.

Studio

Châteauneuf-du-Rhône, Provence

By appointment only.

Begin a commission