Belle Île

Belle Île experiences a warm-summer Mediterranean climate.

The island was held by British troops from 1761, following its capture by an expedition sent out from England, to 1763, when it was returned to France in exchange for Menorca as part of the Peace of Paris. Because of the upheaval from the conflict, half the population had moved back to the mainland and the abandoned lands were offered to the deported Acadians who settled here in 1766.

The attacks on Belle Île and siege of Belle Île have been described by Olaudah Equiano (ca. 1745-ca. 1797) in his autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African, 1789, June 1792.[9] His book was a bestseller in his own time. He became a central figure in the British abolitionist movement, as a forceful abolitionist lecturer, based on his own experiences as a former slave. Equiano gave a detailed eyewitness report of the attacks and siege.

Much of the island's current population is descended from repatriated Acadian colonists who returned to France after being expelled from Acadia (1755–1764) during the Expulsion of the Acadians.[10]

Today, Belle-Île's population is about 5,300, and its economy is largely dependent on tourism and fishing.

The island has been a popular location for artists. Octave Penguilly L'Haridon's 1859 painting Les Petites mouettes ("Little Gulls") (1858, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes) depicts the island. It was praised by Maxime Du Camp and Charles Baudelaire, who referred to the sense of the uncanny, as though the rocks make "a portal open to infinity...a wound of white birds, and the solitude!"[12] During the 1870s and 1880s, French Impressionist painter Claude Monet painted the rock formations at Belle Île. Monet's series of paintings of the rocks at Belle Île astounded the Paris art world when he first exhibited them in 1887.[13][14] Most notable are the Storm, Coast at Belle-Ile and Cliffs at Belle-Ile both rendered in 1886. The first time Auguste Rodin saw the ocean off the Brittany coast he exclaimed, “It’s a Monet."

Australian born artist John Russell was a man of means and having married a beautiful Italian, Mariana Antoinetta Matiocco, he settled at Belle Île off the coast of Brittany where he established an artists' colony. Russell had met Vincent van Gogh in Paris and formed a friendship with him.[15] Van Gogh spoke highly of Russell's work, and after his first summer in Arles in 1888 he sent twelve drawings of his paintings to Russell, to inform him about the progress of his work. Monet often worked with Russell at Belle Île and influenced his style, though it has been said that Monet preferred some of Russell's Belle Île seascapes to his own. Russell did not attempt to make his pictures known.

In 1897 and 1898 Henri Matisse visited Belle Île. Russell introduced him to impressionism and to the work of Van Gogh (who was relatively unknown at the time). Matisse's style changed radically, and he would later say "Russell was my teacher, and Russell explained colour theory to me."[16]

The island is the setting for portions of the novel The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later, Alexandre Dumas père's second sequel to The Three Musketeers. Dumas has his character Aramis fortify the island (in place of Vauban, historically) and Porthos dies there, in the caves of Locmaria.