CHAPTER 11 Death at Sea: Symbolism and Charles Cottet's Subjective Realism Maura Coughlin INTRODUCTION At the turn of the century, visual artist Charles Cottet exhibited sea- scapes and images of Breton '''omen in mourning, a project he collec- tively titled In the Country of the Sea. Although almost forgotten today, in the period prior to World 'iVar One, Cottet's works were prominent in public exhibitions; they received enthusiastic critical attention and were avidly collected,l lVlany critics noted that his focus on rural life, rooted in the specifics of Breton coastal culture, was a Naturalist off- spring of the politically radical realism of Gustave Courbet and Jean- Franr;ois Millet. 2 Nonetheless, when shown alongside international Symbolist works, his imagery also shared many of these artists' formal str ategies and thematic iterations of eternal, associative, and allegori- cal symbols. Leonce Beneditc, curator of the Luxembourg Museum, acquired works by Cottet for the French state at about the same time that he critically praised its "subjective realism" in reviews. 3 Benedite's seemingly paradoxical phrase best demonstrates the way that his style and subject matter adhered to an appealing middle ground, or else struck a compromise between Natw'alism and Symbolism. That Cottet has not received a great deal of attention in recent scholarship is surpri sing, given that images of peasant culture in nine- teenth-century Brittany are central to the history of art in France. From the mid-IS80s to the World War One, Breton subjects had an alm ost univer sal appeal to artistic tastes at once academic, Naturalist, avant-garde, and nostalgic. 4 vVhat may explain Cottet's marginal statuS