Chestnut Vendor

Chestnut Vendor, dated 1935, belongs to the category of Paris street-seller subjects that Béraud visited across his career. The roasted chestnut vendor — stationed at a corner brazier in autumn and winter, the charred nuts sold in paper cones to passers-by — was among the most recognizable figures of the Parisian street, a fixture whose presence marked both the working-class economy of the city and the seasonal pleasures of its outdoor public life. Béraud's interest in such vendors was consistent with his broader documentary attention to the human geography of Paris: not only the fashionable classes in parks and restaurants, but also the small traders and service workers who made the city function. A 1935 Chestnut Vendor represents an artist in his mid-eighties returning to a subject type that had occupied him across six decades.

Oil on panel in Béraud's precise, figurally focused style. The small format typical of panel works suits the intimate scale of a street-vendor subject, where the figure's costume, implements, and surrounding context are the primary documentary information. Béraud renders the vendor and brazier with the same careful observation he applied to fashionable figures in the Bois de Boulogne.