Painted during Paul Sérusier's radical years at Huelgoat in Brittany, 'Bretonne allaitant' belongs to the extraordinary series he made there, alongside 'Jeune Bretonne à la Cruche' and 'L'Averse'. Outlining his figures in firm black, laying flat tints of warm colour, and fusing the Italian Primitives with the Japanese print, Sérusier gives an everyday Breton scene a hieratic stillness, lifting it to the universality of the Old Masters' Mother and Child, and anticipating Picasso's own maternities of 1901–03.
