These summer wanderings of Caldecott in Brittany were prolific of work; his pencil and notebook were never at rest, as the pages of [Breton Folk] testify (see [Chapter xi].). The drawings, both in 1874 and in 1878, mark a strong artistic advance upon similar work in the Harz Mountains. His feeling for the sentiment and beauty of landscape, especially the open land,—generally absent from the sketches in the Harz Mountains,—is noticeable here. The statuesque grace of the younger women, the picturesqueness of costume, operations of husbandry, outdoor fêtes and the like, and the open air effect of nearly every group of figures seen in these summer journeys—all came as delightful material for his pencil.
Caldecott's studies with M. Dalou, the sculptor, in 1874, and the great proficiency he had already obtained in modelling in clay, enabled him to make several successful groups from his Brittany subjects.
On the Road Side, Brittany.
The bright-eyed stolid child in sabots at the roadside (one of the first of the quaint little figures that attracted his attention in Brittany) stands on the writer's table in concrete presentment in clay; the model is not much larger than the sketch—the front, the profile, and the back view, each forming a separate and faithful study from life.
The young mother and child in the cathedral at Guingamp (reproduced opposite) was another successful effort in modelling, but Caldecott was not satisfied with it excepting as a rough sketch—"a recollection in clay."
It is interesting here to note the handling of the artist in his favourite material, French clay. The model stands but six inches high, but it was intended to have reproduced it larger. Another sketch in the round was of "a pig of Brittany," reproduced on page [194].
"Save up," he writes about this time to a friend in Manchester, "and be an art patron; you will soon be able to buy some interesting terra cottas by R. C.!"
This was a heavy year, for many illustrations were produced not mentioned in these pages; and in October he was busy on the wax bas-relief of a "Brittany horse fair," afterwards cast in metal and exhibited in the Royal Academy in 1876 (see page [137]).