Ar mirdi - Pont-Aven Museum

The Musée de Pont-Aven was founded in 1985 in response to the desire of both local people and visitors to discover and rediscover the works of the eponymous School. The institution initially built its reputation on the quality of its temporary exhibitions and documentation relating to the artists who came to work in Brittany between 1850 and 1950.

The Pont-Aven School

The Pont-Aven School was the name given retrospectively to the events occurring in Pont-Aven and Le Pouldu at the end of the 19th century. Among the movement’s main characteristics are the rejection of literal imitations of nature; the use of simplified and often outlined forms; the application of pigments in flat patches of colour rather in brushstrokes; and a tolerance for artistic subjectivity. The image of the group of painters who formed around Gauguin as of 1888 is not that of a master surrounded by his students, but rather of a group of artists sharing personal and often innovative ideas and aesthetics on the fringes of the academic art world.

Discover few artworks of the museum

Paul GAUGUIN, Breton village under the snow

At the judicial sale of Gauguin’s possessions after his death in 1903, Victor Segalen, then a medical officer, was visiting Papeete and bought several paintings. For 7 francs, he bought an astonishing painting entitled ‘Niagara Falls’, which drew jeers from the room. The auctioneer had in fact presented it upside down, and once turned over, the Niagara Falls became this Breton village under the snow. It is difficult to date this work precisely: was it executed in 1894 during Gauguin’s last tumultuous stay in Brittany and taken by the artist to Tahiti? Or did Gauguin paint it around 1898-1899 in Polynesia, to evoke Christmas Eve, remembering Pont-Aven under the snow ten years earlier? Although Segalen long believed that Gauguin had died while painting this canvas, the fact remains that the artist kept this memory of Pont-Aven, the birthplace of the famous school, preciously in his Polynesian hut until his death.

Paul GAUGUIN, Two Breton Women’s Heads

This pastel shows the faces of two young Breton women wearing millers’ headdresses, one full-face and one in profile, and both looking outside the frame. The woman on the right has slightly almond-shaped eyes, probably due to the artist having just returned to Pont-Aven after spending two years in Tahiti, from 1891 to 1893. Some art historians specialising in Symbolism perceive in this work an evocation of the separation of dream and reality, and see it as Gauguin’s farewell to Brittany. Gauguin dedicated the drawing to his friend Maxime Maufra with the Maori expression “Aïta Aramoe”, meaning not forgotten. The dedication shows Gauguin’s attachment to Maufra, an artist he considered to be ahead of his time.

Émile BERNARD, Study for The Buckwheat Harvesters

Émile Bernard was 20 years old when he made this sketchlike painting whose essential Synthetism epitomises the Pont-Aven aesthetic. Bernard worked alongside Gauguin from his arrival in Pont-Aven in August 1888 until his departure in November. This was a period of intense artistic activity, and he regularly sent his parents parcels of small nature studies on canvas which were easily shippable by train. These unsigned paintings were simple sketches intended to serve as the basis for studio canvases. This study for the right-hand side of the final version of Le Blé noir shows two women in traditional Pont-Aven costume standing sheaves of buckwheat upright to dry. At the end of summer, before harvest time, buckwheat stems turned bright red, which the painter has expressed by placing streaks of red throughout the composition.

Émile BERNARD, Pont-Aven Landscape or The Red Tree

This canvas was painted in 1888, at a time marked by the new aesthetic developed in Pont-Aven. The main characteristics of the emerging style can be seen here: flat perspective, bright colours, a high horizon line, geometric shapes and large, single-colour forms. The painting depicts
an open field composed of wide horizontal bands in a variety of greens and yellows. Among the trees bordering the field, one, with a simplified round crown, majestically dominates the composition. The horizontal structure of the work is broken here and there by the trees’ vertical trunks. This painting, once belonging to Maurice Denis, is also known as L’Arbre roux. This second title was provided by the Denis family and has no historical reference.

Paul SERUSIER, Portrait of Marie Lagadu

One of Paul Sérusier’s early works, Portrait de Marie Lagadu was painted in Pont-Aven in 1889. Sérusier met Marie Lagadu in a Pont-Aven boarding-house, where she worked as a servant. Boarding-house workers were often willing to sit for the painters. This three-quarter portrait of the model is of historical interest, as it depicts the working headdress typical in Pont-Aven. This was one of the first paintings Sérusier made at Pont-Aven in which he fully applied the principles expounded by Gauguin in the Bois d’Amour.

Maxime MAUFRA, The Creek

Maxime Maufra, official French Navy painter, is known for his seascapes. This energetic canvas is characteristic of the artist’s original style: here, he deliberately leaves the canvas partially unpainted. Only the sea is painted in with thick layers of pigment, while the cliffs in the background are sparingly sketched out. With this technique, often used by the Nabis, the artist works on canvas as he would in etching, omitting the details and putting the emphasis on the strong composition and true colours which convey the essential information.

Armand SEGUIN, Nude of the Comtesse d’Hauteroche

Along with Paul Gauguin, Armand Seguin was one of the pioneers of the Pont-Aven School. He painted this canvas in Paris in 1896, at a time when his production was slowing and his funds were dwindling. On 26th March 1896, he wrote to Roderic O’Conor: “[…] I am busy at present. Unfortunately, I am constantly distracted by memories, by what others have done before me, but the great masters all had this feeling; what amuses and interests me most right now is the beauty of the nude. And her body is marvellous, with a splendid purity of line and a delectable skin colour […]”. The composition is reminiscent of Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’herbe (The Luncheon on the Grass): a landscape forms the background for a three-quarter portrait of a nude woman seated on a cloth. This canvas was purchased during the artist’s lifetime by influential art critic Arsène Alexandre, and was later acquired by Maurice Denis.

Maurice DENIS, Bathers at Port-Blanc

Maurice Denis visited Perros-Guirec for the first time in 1886, and in 1908 he purchased Villa Silencio and established his summer home there. This harmonious and peaceful canvas depicts Port-Blanc harbour, not far from Perros-Guirec in the department of Côtes d’Armor. In this seaside scene, three figures are bathing while two nudes stand unabashedly in the foreground, their lower bodies hidden by imposing granite boulders. Pink rocks along the coastline contrast with a vast expanse of luminous, pale blue water, where white brushstrokes indicate ripples on the surface. This repetitive element gives the work a “decorative” aspect.

Paul SERUSIER, The Piglets of Le Pouldu

Paul Sérusier was one of the artists who, along with Paul Gauguin, brought renown to Pont-Aven. He produced this canvas during a stay in the artists’ colony. Inspired by a moment from daily life, the canvas is structured around a diagonal divide between two fields of colour: a background of cool blues, and a foreground in warm ochre hues with the two piglets. The style of this work is characteristic of the Pont-Aven School, simplifying line and celebrating colour. It is also worth noting the bold framing, which truncates the female figure, and the single visible leg, which strikingly conveys movement. These elements reveal the influence of early photography and Japanese prints, which were just becoming known in France.

Maurice DENIS, Mother and Child at Le Pouldu, Evening Light

From 1890, Maurice Denis asserted himself as the theoretician of the Pont-Aven School, formulating the fundamental principles dear to Gauguin and the Nabis. This canvas, painted in 1899 while on vacation at Portier guest-house in Le Pouldu, depicts one of the family scenes Denis was fond
of painting. His wife Marthe and their youngest daughter Bernadette are flanked by Marthe’s sister Eva and the Denis’ eldest daughter, Noëlle. Denis’ choice of colours gives a warm feel to the work, and this impression is strengthened by the contrastingly cool tones of the sea at nightfall seen through the open window in the background.

Meijer DE HAAN, Landscape with Blue Tree

Meijer de Haan met Paul Gauguin at the 1889 exhibition of the Impressionist and Synthetist Group at Café Volpini, and accompanied him on his return to Brittany. In November of the same year, Gauguin wrote to Émile Bernard: “De Haan works incredibly well here.” Van Gogh also wrote about the artist: “De Haan’s drawings are most beautiful, I like them very much; I would greatly like to meet him one day.” The highly-simplified forms that make up this hillside orchard landscape are outlined in blue, and no perspective is created by the flat patches of colour. The resulting image shows that the artist had completely absorbed Gauguin’s aesthetic ideas, while adding his own personal touch.

Mogens BALLIN, The Church at Saint-Nolff

Mogens Ballin painted his first landscapes in the north of his homeland, Denmark. He arrived in Paris in 1890 with a letter of recommendation from his French teacher in Copenhagen, Mette Gauguin, addressed to Camille Pissarro. Ballin met Jan Verkade (1868-1946) at the Paris banquet in honour of Gauguin, and the two formed a lasting friendship. It was Verkade who introduced him to the Nabis, and he followed Paul Sérusier’s advice to visit Pont-Aven and Huelgoat. In this modestly-sized work, Ballin uses dark outlines and a limited palette of softened tones to render simplified forms in the Pont-Aven School style. A white church lights up the centre of the painting, which represents the Morbihan town of Saint-Nolff where Ballin stayed with Verkade in the summer of 1892.

Claude-Émile SCHUFFENECKER, Portrait of Madame Champsaur

Schuffenecker was born in Alsace and studied under Paul Baudry (1828-1886) before taking evening classes with Carolus-Duran (1837-1917) and at the Académie Suisse in Paris. He met and befriended Gauguin in 1872 at the brokerage firm of Bertin. Not only was he responsible for the historic meeting of Bernard and Gauguin in Pont-Aven in 1886, but he also organised the Pont-Aven group’s first exhibition at Café Volpini in Paris in 1889. This work depicts the wife of Félicien Champsaur, a late 19th-century novelist. The portrait gives an impression of refinement, with
Madame Champsaur in elegant city clothing decorated with Breton-style embroidery. The reference to Rodin’s sculpture Succube (The Succubus) evokes the female demon with the power to seduce men.

Paul RANSON, Study for Christ and Buddha

This pastel is a summary of the art of Ranson who, like the other members of the Nabis, was driven by philosophical and religious questions. Enthralled by Schuré’s Grands initiés, a mythical book that sketches the secret history of religions and explores the esoteric tradition, he was equally enthralled, in the spirit of the late nineteenth century, by the theosophical theories of Helena Blavatsky and those of Sâr Péladan’s Salon de la Rose+Croix. This pastel is a study for the painting ‘Christ and Buddha’ (circa 1890) in the Netherlands. The syncretism of Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism is extremely prominent: first, the god Vishnu, recognisable by his tiara surrounded by lotus flowers, symbols of the Universe. Then overhead, a Buddha shrouded in an orange aura, reminiscent of Ranson’s discovery of the Buddhist sanctuary in the Annam and Tonkin pavilion at the 1889 Universal Exhibition, where he was also fascinated by Gauguin’s paintings in the Café Volpini.

Wladyslaw SLEWINSKI, Still-Life with Apples and Candlestick

Gauguin’s Polish disciple Slewinski moved from Pont-Aven to Le Pouldu and then to Doëlan between 1889 and 1916. This still life in the style of Paul Gauguin testifies to the master’s influence. Flat, single-colour areas heavily outlined, a bird’s-eye perspective and simplified forms all clearly
evoke the Pont-Aven aesthetic in this painting dedicated to Marie Schewtzoff.

Georges LACOMBE, Breton Man Holding a Child

In 1893, Lacombe met Paul Sérusier, who introduced him to the Nabis. Sérusier’s influence is evident in this painting, which is steeped in mystery and rendered with flat, outlined patches of colour. This is one of the few paintings Lacombe made during his stays in Brittany —most often in Camaret on the south coast— between 1888 and 1897.

Henry MORET, Boulders Along the Aven

Henry Moret was a member of the Pont-Aven School during the years that Gauguin was in Brittany, after which he returned to his natural penchant for Impressionism. This Synthetist work depicts a landscape structured along a diagonal line dividing the rocks and greenery of
the foreground from the River Aven and a few houses. Between these two areas, and linking them, a young boy wearing a beret stands looking at the river. The scene is from a bird’s-eye perspective, with the sky reduced to a horizontal line. Moret used his preferred colour harmony of greens and pinks for this painting, applying the colours with short parallel strokes. The deliberate simplicity, diagonal composition and saturated colour of this work illustrate the lesson Moret had drawn from Gauguin: seek the essential, eliminate detail and anecdote, and retain only what is vital.

Burr H. NICHOLLS, The Tinsmith

American artists came to Brittany to paint en plein air and in search of realism. Here, they explored a living peasant culture that, to them, seemed exotic. After Wylie’s death in 1877, the American artists could no longer benefit from his guidance, but they continued to work together and critique each other’s work. At the time, their focus was on the effects of light. Nicholls, like many American artists of the time, was interested in portraying figures in full sun. In this painting, the play of light and shadow—particularly that of the vegetation darkening the façade of the house—sets off the figures, which are bathed in light. The scene from daily life depicts a tinsmith at his work, which consisted of making and repairing metal utensils. A young girl in traditional clothing stands observing him.

Marie LUPLAU, The Bois d’Amour at Pont-Aven

Danish painter Marie Luplau was one of a number of Scandinavians living in Pont-Aven at the end of the 19th century. She studied under Peter Vilhelm Kyhn (1819-1903) and completed her training at the Académie Colarossi in Paris. She had a preference for landscape painting, and made sketches from life which she transformed into oil paintings in her studio. Several years before Paul Sérusier and Émile Bernard, she painted the Bois d’Amour and its lane of beech trees in a highly-detailed, realist style in the spirit of the Barbizon school.

Ferdinand du PUIGAUDEAU, The Magic Lantern

Il s’agit d’une scène nocturne comme l’affectionne l’artiste qui en a d’ailleurs exécuté plusieurs versions. Inventée en 1659 et baptisée «lanterne de peur», la lanterne magique divertit villes et campagnes, en projetant des bandes animées et colorisées sur des plaques de verre. Les Quimpérois les appellent aussi «Termajis» par contraction et déformation de «lanTERne MAGIque».