Exhibited: “Gauguin et ses amis. Peintres en Bretagne. Pont-Aven et Le Pouldu”, Centre Sainte-Benin / Old Convent Saint-Benin, Archeological Museum of Valle d'Aoste, July 3-November 7, 1993, ill. p. 241. Provenance: The Danish artist Mogens Ballin, Copenhagen. Provenance: Esther Bredholt, Copenhagen. Provenance: Private collection, Denmark.

With his distinctive stylized religious figures surrounded by elegant decorative patterns, Charles Filiger was early on regarded as a representative of a genuine mysticism and an heir to the illuminators of the 13th century. His great inspiration was Cimabue and Giotto.

He achieved even in his own time great fame as part of the Pont-Aven school around Paul Gauguin and the Symbolists, and he worked amongst others with Mogens Ballin in Le Pouldu in the early 1890s. But because of a difficult mind, alcohol- and drug use he withdrew from public life and slipped into oblivion and in his last years he went in and out of mental institutions. He died in 1928.

André Breton, one of the protagonists of the surrealist movement, rediscovered Charles Filiger and became a great collector of his works, which he hung up on the walls around his bed. He considered them to possess a mystical protective force as a kind of talismans.

Today Charles Filiger is regarded as one of the most profoundly mystical painters of the 20th century.