Belle-Île, Belle-Île-en-Mer, or Belle Isle (Breton: Ar Gerveur; Old Breton: Guedel) is a French island off the coast of Brittany in the département of Morbihan, and the largest of Brittany’s islands. It is 14 kilometres (7 1⁄2 nautical miles) from the Quiberonpeninsula. Administratively, the island is divided into four communes: Bangor, Le Palais, Locmaria, Sauzon. Belle-Île formed a canton until 2015 when it was merged into the canton of Quiberon as part of a general overhaul.
During the summer the island’s population increases dramatically, as many people own a second home on the island due to its secluded location and beaches. At the 2009 census, the population of Belle Île was 4,920. However, in summer the population may increase to 25,000, with a peak at 35,000 between 15 July and 15 August due to tourist activity.
Lyrique en Mer/Festival de Belle Île is the largest opera festival in western France. Founded in 1998 by American opera singer Richard Cowan, the festival produces two staged operas every summer, conducted by Music Director Philip Walsh and directed by Mr. Cowan, the Artistic Director. Additionally, there are sacred concerts in all four of the island’s historic churches, as well as many smaller concerts and Master Classes. Lyrique en Mer has wide support from the French business community as well as from the Conseil Général, the Conseil Régional.
The island has been a popular location for artists. Octave Penguilly L’Haridon‘s 1859 painting Les Petites mouettes (“Little Gulls”) (1858, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes) depicts the island. It was praised by Maxime Du Camp and Charles Baudelaire, who referred to the sense of the uncanny, as though the rocks make “a portal open to infinity…a wound of white birds, and the solitude!” During the 1870s and 1880s, French Impressionist painter Claude Monet painted the rock formations at Belle Île. Monet’s series of paintings of the rocks at Belle Île astounded the Paris art world when he first exhibited them in 1887. Most notable are the Storm, Coast at Belle-Ile and Cliffs at Belle-Ile both rendered in 1886. The first time Auguste Rodin saw the ocean off the Brittany coast he exclaimed, “It’s a Monet.”
Australian born artist John Russell was a man of means and having married a beautiful Italian, Mariana Antoinetta Matiocco, he settled at Belle Île off the coast of Brittany where he established an artists’ colony.
Russell had met Vincent van Gogh in Paris and formed a friendship with him. Van Gogh spoke highly of Russell’s work, and after his first summer in Arles in 1888 he sent twelve drawings of his paintings to Russell, to inform him about the progress of his work. Monet often worked with Russell at Belle Île and influenced his style, though it has been said that Monet preferred some of Russell’s Belle Île seascapes to his own. Russell did not attempt to make his pictures known.
In 1897 and 1898 Henri Matisse visited Belle Île. Russell introduced him to impressionism and to the work of Van Gogh (who was relatively unknown at the time). Matisse’s style changed radically, and he would later say “Russell was my teacher, and Russell explained colour theory to me.”
