Pont-Aven School - History

History

The opening of the railway line from Paris to Quimper in 1862 encouraged tourism in Brittany. The first group of artists to arrive in Pont-Aven during the summer of 1866 consisted of American art students from Philadelphia including Robert Wylie, Charles Way, Earl Shinn and Howard Roberts. They were soon joined by three other Americans, Benjamin Champney, Frederick Bridgeman and Moses Wright, by two English painters, Lewis and Carraway, and by two Frenchmen. Over the next 15 years, the reputation of the colony spread far and wide, attracting many other painters. Jean-Léon Gérôme, one of the leading French Academic painters, encouraged his American students to go there, while French landscape artists such as William Bouguereau, Louis-Nicolas Cabat and Paul Sébillot also spent summers in the village. Among the other foreigners to visit were Herman van den Anker from the Netherlands, Augustus Burke from Ireland and Paul Peel from Canada. There were three hotels ready to accommodate them: the Hôtel de Voyageurs, the Hôtel du Lion d'Or and the Pension Gloanec. The artists were attracted by the beauty of the surrounding countryside and the low cost of living. Many of them were looking for a new point of departure, hoping to break away from the Academic style of the École des Beaux-Arts and from Impressionism which was beginning to decline. Brittany opened up new horizons with its language, traditional dress, fervant Catholic belief, an oral tradition and the ubiquitous presence of granite crosses and churches.

The two most innovative painters to arrive on the scene were Paul Gauguin and Émile Bernard. Gauguin had reached in Pont-Aven in July 1886 while Bernard came later in the summer. On the advice of Émile Schuffenecker he sought out Gauguin who had decided to devote himself fully to painting, appreciating the primitive lifestyle of the village, far away from the hustle and bustle of Paris. When the two met again two years later, they consolidated their relationship. Bernard showed Gauguin his Pardon à Pont-Aven (1888) which some believe inspired Gauguin to paint his Vision du Sermon, Bernard claiming he was the first to adopt the approach which became known as Synthetism. Other artists who stayed with Gauguin, first at the Pension Gloanec in Pont-Aven and later at the Buvette de la Plage in Le Pouldu, were Charles Filiger, Meijer de Haan, Charles Laval, Roderic O'Conor, Émile Schuffenecker, Armand Séguin and Władysław Ślewiński. After his first voyage to Tahiti in 1891, Gauguin returned to Pont-Aven for the last time in 1894, once again staying with his circle of friends at the Pension Gloanec.