Postcard Gorges du Verdon at Saint-Maurin, La Douce France, Yvon Paris

French postcard from the nineteen-twenties or thirties showing a sepia phototype of the Gorges du Verdon at Saint-Maurin in Provence. The image shows a solitary figure in dark suit and cap, seated on a rock at the edge of the gorge, gazing out over the valley. Below, the Verdon river winds between the limestone walls, and in the background rise the mountain ranges flanking the canyon. In the lower right of the image, the signature "Yvon". On the verso, the caption "LA DOUCE FRANCE - PAYSAGES ET PIERRES DE PROVENCE - Les Gorges du Verdon à St-Morin" with the number 3. Published by Edition d'Art Yvon in Paris, Fabrication française. The verso is unwritten and unposted. The card is in good condition.

The Gorges du Verdon is the deepest canyon in Europe, a gorge reaching in places seven hundred metres deep that the river Verdon has carved into the limestone of the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence. Pierre Yves Petit, active under the pseudonym Yvon (1886-1969), was among the most important French photographer-publishers of the interwar period and was known for his pictorialist approach to landscape. His "La Douce France" series systematically documented the French regions in a sepia aesthetic that consciously returned to the photographic conventions of the late nineteenth century, with solitary figures, atmospheric lighting and literary composition. The figure on the rock is not a touristic accessory but a central compositional element: he places the observer in the landscape and lends the gorge its human scale. Saint-Maurin, a hamlet in the commune of La Palud-sur-Verdon on the northern Route des Crêtes, offers vantage points that in the nineteen-thirties were captured by Yvon and other pictorialist photographers as emblems of wild Provençal nature.