14 juillet, fête foraine, c.1895-98 by Ferdinand Puigaudeau
14 juillet, fête foraine, c.1895-98 by Ferdinand Puigaudeau
Crowds celebrate France’s national day, Bastille Day on the 14th July, at the evening fairground in this impressionist piece.
MEDIUM: Oil on canvas
DIMENSIONS: (unframed) 25.8 x 31.8 ins/ 65.5 x 80.8 cm
SIGNATURE: Signed ‘F. du Puigaudeau’ (lower right)
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Description
Puigeaudeu often painted the same scene at different times of the day to explore the play of light in much the same way as Claude Monet experimented with the effect of light.
Provenance
Schiller & Bodo, New York;
Private collection, Greenwich, Connecticut (acquired from the above in 2006)
Biography
As a young boy, du Puigaudeau was close to his uncle Henri de Chateaubriant, who encouraged his artistic pursuits. His education was traditional and he studied at various boarding schools from Paris to Nice. In 1882, du Puigaudeau travelled to Italy, then to Tunisia, and taught himself to paint.
The first work which can be safely attributed to du Puigaudeau was dated 1886, the year he visited Pont-Aven where he befriended Charles Laval and Paul Gauguin with whom he decided to travel to Panama and Martinique, but was unable to do so as he was called up for military service. In 1890, he presented one of his works at the Salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux Arts at a time when his father had introduced him to the dealer Paul Durand-Ruell. He got married on 7 August 1893 in Saint-Nazaire, and had one daughter named Odette. In 1895 he settled down in Pont-Aven for three years.
After falling out with Durand-Ruell in 1903, he visited Venice in 1904 where he produced many canvases but subsequently returned to Batz-sur-Mer. 1907 saw him move into the manor house of Kervaudu in Le Croisic. Degas fondly called him “the hermit of Kervaudu” due to his secluded and solitary existence. In later life, Puigaudeau turned away from painting the mystical night time scenes of the Pont-Aven group and became an Impressionist-inspired landscape painter.