Bateaux de pêche, Audierne, 1906 by Henry Moret
Bateaux de pêche, Audierne, 1906 by Henry Moret
Although Moret and his family were from Normandy it was Brittany that held a life-long fascination for the artist. Moret worked there and in the coastal villages and islands along the south coast of Brittany, painting in Douelan, Clohar and Belle Ile and on Graix and on the remote island of Ouessant on the western tip of Brittany. Moret sought out the local fisherman and farmers, painting the landscape and rocky coastline of this remote and desolate area.
DIMENSIONS: (unframed) 54.4 x 81.0 cm/21.4 x 31.9 ins
SIGNATURE: Signed ‘Henry Moret’ and dated (lower left); titled (verso)
MEDIUM: Oil on canvas
Price: £95,000
Description
Particularly interested in depicting the everyday lives of the villagers, Moret from 1896, was firmly installed in Brittany, in the port of Doëlan. He was to spend the rest of his life in Brittany and became known for his paintings of this area. He focused on depicting the coastline and people of Brittany.
He came to Paris only to show his paintings at the Salon d’Automne and to meet his dealer Durand-Ruel who regularly exhibited him from 1895 onwards.
To be exhibited by Durand-Ruel was a privilege to which many artists aspired. Durand-Ruel and Moret were on good terms, and they kept in close contact throughout the artist’s life. In 1893, Moret participated in the Exhibition of Impressionist and Symbolist painters at the Barc de Boutteville.
Provenance
Private collection, by whom acquired circa 1950, and thence by descent;
Sale, Christie’s, New York, 15 May 2015, lot 1297;
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner.
Biography
Henry Moret was born in Cherbourg, Normandy, the son of a garrison officer. A gentle, thoughtful man and an indefatigable worker, Henry Moret discovered Brittany during his military service in 1875. Having trained at the Ecole des Beaux Arts and in the studios of Gérôme and Laurens in Paris, Moret went to Brittany in 1881, staying at Le Pouldu near Pont Aven. For the rest of his life he divided his time between Paris and Brittany, painting the landscape and rugged coastline. In 1888, while living in Pont Aven, he met Gauguin and the circle of painters who gathered around him in L’Auberge Gloanec. Moret was influenced by Gauguin’s philosophy of Syntheticism, summarized in 1890 by Maurice Denis: ‘It is well to remember that a picture before being a battle horse, a nude woman, or some anecdote, is essentially a flat surface covered with colours assembled in a certain order’. Moret’s Breton landscapes of the early 1890s have often been mistaken for those of Gauguin. In his later work Moret re-explored the more naturalistic approach of the Impressionists, using a palette dominated by blues, greens and pinks.
In 1893 Moret fell in love with Célina Chatenet, a dressmaker who became his wife in 1910. She helped to support him financially until a contract with Durand-Ruel in 1895 freed Moret from money worries. He exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon d’Automne. In 1900 and 1902 Durand-Ruel showed his work in New York, along with that of Maufra and Loiseau. Following Moret’s death in 1913, Durand-Ruel held a number of posthumous exhibitions and in one catalogue Moret was described as having the ability ‘to express the Breton landscape exactly… he occupies a unique place in the evolution of art at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, as he has been able to fuse together two fundamentally opposing styles: the Syntheticism of Pont Aven and Impressionism’.
The work of Henry Moret is represented in the Musée d’Orsay, Paris; the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Quimper; Southampton City Art Gallery; the National Museums and Galleries of Wales, Cardiff; the Hermitage, St Petersburg; the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Indianapolis Museum of Art.