Antique & Vintage Postcards

A sun-dappled summer's day on the Breton coast comes alive in this beautifully sharp real-photo postcard of Portrieux-les-Bains, captioned L'Arrivée devant la Plage — the arrival before the beach — where open-topped touring cars of the early motoring age are parked beneath a broad canopy tree while elegantly dressed visitors mill about a low-roofed seaside pavilion. On the left, the multi-story Hôtel du Mouton Blanc commands the corner with its hand-lettered garage sign at street level, and a man in a white shirt leans casually in the doorway; further up the cobbled main street, awnings and shopfronts recede into the summer haze, punctuated by the silhouettes of strolling holidaymakers. Portrieux-les-Bains — today Saint-Quay-Portrieux — was a fashionable seaside resort in the Côtes-du-Nord (now Côtes-d'Armor) of Brittany, drawing Parisian bourgeoisie and automobile tourists throughout the interwar decades; the visible license plate fragment "1759-G" and the cut of the cars suggest a date in the early-to-mid 1920s. Published as card no. 42 in publisher A.B.'s local series, this card captures the exact moment when the automobile and the seaside holiday collided to reshape French leisure culture.