Henry Moret

Private Collection, USA
Acquired from the above by the present owner

The present view is of the coast of the Île de Houat, an island just off the south coast of Brittany. Moving to the artists' colony of Pont Aven in Brittany in 1888, where he fell under the influence of Paul Gauguin, Moret painted Brittany’s untouched nature in plein-air, visiting fishing villages, and painting its rocky coastline at all times of day. He became a leading name in Impressionist circles, and was made famous by Paris dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, who championed his work in Paris, London, and New York. Maxime Maufra, a fellow painter working in Brittany at the same time, wrote of Moret: 'In love with Brittany where he spent all of his life, he understood the intimate feeling for beings and for things; he ignored nothing. […] He examined the horizon with his eye while walking within the nature that he loved.  Coasts, forests, valleys, in every season, he observed them with all of his senses and reproduced them accordingly, with all of his spirit and sincerity.' (Maxime Maufra, ‘Propos de Peintre’, in Henry Moret, aquarelles et peintures 1856-1913, exh. cat., Musée du Pont-Aven, Pont Aven, 1988).