An ethnographic depiction of pious customs, the painting, which dates from the height of Naturalism in France, evokes the ceremony of the ‘Pardon’, an indulgence granted by the Church to the faithful, and serves as a pretext for an analytical look at a world resistant to the transformations seen at the end of the nineteenth century. At the time Brittany received particular attention from a variety of artists, including Paul Gauguin and Émile Bernard, who regularly met in Pont-Aven and were seduced by the suggestive power of the local traditions.

Photographs taken by Dagnan-Bouveret at Rumengol, Finistère, in 1886, and individual portraits of models drawn from life, subject to successive rehearsals by means of preparatory sketches for the composition, contributed to the final piece. The ultimate work, assembled by the painter in the studio, reveals considerable effort in terms of the construction of the composition and a complex methodology of scene organisation. The work was presented to great acclaim at the Paris Salon in 1889, where it was awarded a prize.