Sollier set off immediately for French West Africa, to spend three years in Senegal, sending portraits of indigenous peoples – Wolof and Bambara women – to the Pavillon de Marsan and the Salon des Artistes Français, and colourful and exotic market scenes from Dakar.
From these bustling centres of trade Sollier brought back portraits of merchants from neighbouring lands, such as the Maure au chapelet, submitted to the 1923 Salon.
The painter cultivated two themes, the exotic and the regional, at least until 1935, regularly exhibiting canvases inspired by Africa at the Salon de la Société Coloniale des Artistes Français.
His uncompromising portraits of a Breton women echo the social realism of Jules Adler, whose academy Sollier frequented in parallel to his courses at the École des Beaux-Arts.
The composition's compact organisation intensifies the frontal dialogue between the protagonists, who bear a certain family resemblance to the kin of Jean-le-Boiteux, a peasant from Plougasnou (Finistère) portrayed by Jean-François Raffaëlli in 1876.
The coppery skin tones and broad brushstrokes that convey the humble condition of Sollier's Aïeux are close to the manner of his contemporary Lucien Simon.
This longstanding fidelity was rewarded by the success of his Brittany paintings both with the public and with the judges at the Salon, who awarded him a gold medal at the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques (Paris) in 1937.
That same year Sollier was made a committee and jury member of the Salon des Artistes Français, a distinction to match the degree of his public and official recognition.