Provenance:
Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris, France, (label verso) J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, California, (label verso) Richard Green Galleries, London, England, (label verso) Private Collection, France

Literature:
To be included in the forthcoming Loiseau Catalogue raisonné being prepared by Didier Imbert

Gustave Loiseau was born in Paris in 1865. His parents were butchers, originally from Pontoise, who moved their shop to the Ile-Saint-Louis in Paris in 1870. Loiseau's early education was of an extremely elementary nature, since a primary-school certificate seemed more than adequate to parents who thought only of having their son work in the family's shop. As a youth Loiseau worked long hours in the family business, but still found time to pursue his artistic interests. After suffering an attack of typhoid that brought him near to death, he explained to his parents his aspirations to become an artist. Although disappointed by his choice, his parents did not oppose his wishes, and upon his recovery from his illness in 1880, Loiseau was placed as an apprentice with a decorator who was a friend of the family. His parents, realizing that their son was unlikely to change his mind, soon sold their business and retired to Pontoise.

In 1884, after one year of military service in Paris, Loiseau returned to civilian life and resumed his work as an apprentice decorator. He was, however, no longer happy with this occupation, desiring instead to become a painter. An inheritance Loiseau received from his grandmother in 1887 provided the opportunity for which he had been hoping. Loiseau established himself in Montmartre in 1887, first in the rue Myrrha, and then at La Maison du Trappeur in the rue Ravignon. Loiseau was one of the first artists to occupy this house, which would later achieve international fame as the Bateau-Lavoir, where Picasso lived and worked in his early career. The Bateau-Lavoir was also the house in which Loiseau's close friend and fellow artist Maxime Maufra (1861-1918) kept a studio beginning in 1892.

Living in Montmartre, without familial ties, Loiseau became well acquainted with the members of the artists colony living on La Butte Montmartre. Loiseau, however, had little in common with this eccentric group whose ceaseless hours of carousing took them from the Cabaret du Clou to the Chat Noir. Loiseau enrolled at the Ecole des arts Décoratifs in 1888, where he followed the courses in life-drawing that he felt he needed to advance in his artistic aspirations. Withdrawing after approximately a year of study at the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs, Loiseau turned to the landscape painter Fernand Just Quignon (1854-1941) as his teacher. Loiseau knew Quignon as a result of his former apprenticeship, having spent several months with the artist during the redecorating of his apartment. Although Loiseau found Quignon's luminous and airy painting appealing, he was disappointed by both his approach and his methods. He felt that Quignon's process of painting in his studio from sketches produced works that lacked spontaneity, freshness and intensity. Loiseau, with his totally different method of painting en plein air, found it inconceivable that a canvas should not be painted directly from the subject. In this belief, he shared the ideas of Claude Monet.

Deciding to leave Quignon's studio, Loiseau sought an attractive and inexpensive location where he could concentrate on landscape painting and follow his personal inclinations and artistic convictions. Quignon was one of a number of artists who had been frequent visitors to Pont-Aven since 1880, making the small Breton village famous as an artists colony, turning into an annex of the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Julian in the summer months. On Quignon's advice, Loiseau arrived in Pont-Aven for the first time in May of 1890, taking a room in the cheapest pension in the village, Marie-Jeanne Gloanec's auberge at the end of the town square. It was at the Pension Gloanec that Loiseau met the artists Maxime Maufra and Henry Moret (1856-1913). He and Maufra, with only a four-year difference in age, had much in common and quickly became friends. Sharing a very similar artistic outlook they were both interested in painting nature. Maufra was an outstanding draftsman who had a significant influence on Loiseau's early style. Loiseau was from the outset, however, naturally more inclined toward Impressionism than was Maufra. Under the influence of Gauguin's Breton period of Synthetism and Cloisonnism, Maufra turned his back on the theories of Divisionism that Loiseau was following. Loiseau commented that "in many instances the juxtaposition of spots of color in the Divisionist manner gives an accurate and powerful interpretation of the effects of light."

Both Moret and Maufra urged Loiseau to exhibit at the Salon des Indépendants in 1891 and 1892. Also in 1891, Maufra introduced Loiseau to Le Barc de Boutteville, an art dealer in the rue Le Pelletier in Paris who was very supportive of young artists. It was in this gallery that the Rouen collector François Depeaux became the first to discover Loiseau's paintings. Depeaux, who was a famous collector and a close friend of Claude Monet, bought two of Loiseau's canvases. Although working in a personal style, many of Loiseau's paintings from this period are typical of the Pont-Aven school, in their diagonal compositions, shortened perspectives, and their limited and anti-panoramic fields of view.

When Gauguin returned from Tahiti in 1894, a deep friendship developed between he and Loiseau in Pont-Aven. Although inspired by Gauguin, who gave Loiseau one of his still lifes, he seems to have been little affected by the theories of Synthetism and Cloisonnism being explored by Gauguin and his group, for he continued to work in a mostly impressionist manner. Upon his return to Paris after spending the summer in Brittany, Loiseau contacted Paul Durand-Ruel, the prestigious Paris art dealer who represented Claude Monet and was a champion of the Impressionists. The Impressionist group, whose main figures were Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, and Alfred Sisley, mounted their first organized exhibition in 1874. By 1894, Impressionism had established a strong foothold on the French scene and was beginning to sell and attract attention in America as well. Durand-Ruel began to handle Loiseau's work in 1894, at which time he terminated his exhibiting at Le Barc de Boutteville.

Loiseau's relationship with Durand-Ruel enabled him to travel more extensively and discover the regions and subjects that would inspire him for the remainder of his career. In the spring of 1895, Loiseau moved to Moret-sur-Loing and began painting the hills and rivers of the region. From that time on, Loiseau was to be one of the most sincere interpreters of the French landscape. He commented about his painting, "I try to reproduce as best I can the impression I get from nature … I am guided only by instinct." He journeyed through Normandy, Brittany, and occasionally the Dordogne in summer, returning to the Ile-de-France each winter. From his paintings it is possible to follow his movements. He painted many works in Pontoise, where he lived every winter. In 1904, he had a fine studio built in his garden there, and many of his canvases are views from his studio. After 1899, he also painted frequently in Saint-Cyr-du-Vaudreuil on the banks of the Eure, where he produced an impressive series of poplars, reminiscent of the works of Monet. He spent time in the river valleys the Eure, the Seine, and the Yonne, and in Normandy painted in Dieppe, Fécamp, and Etretat. He also returned faithfully almost every year to Brittany. While there, he continued to base himself in Pont-Aven at the Pension Gloanec, but traveled extensively in the region. He visited Belle-Ile in 1899 and 1900, Saint-Herbot and Le Huelgoat in 1903, Cap Fréhel in 1905 and 1906, Notre-Dame-la-Clarté at Perros-Guirec in 1911, and Douarnenez-Tréboul in 1913. From the windows of his room at the Pension Gloanec he also painted many views of the little town square of Pont-Aven, recording the life of the village in a variety of different lights and times of year.

Toward the end of his life, while maintaining his studio on the quai du Pothuis in Pontoise, Loiseau took another studio on the quai d'Anjou in Paris, where he painted views of the city from his studio window as he had done in Pont-Aven. Loiseau's life ended in Paris, in 1935. He wrote of himself, "I only recognize one virtue in myself, sincerity." Sincerity is a noble virtue to which he remained faithful throughout his life, and a virtue that characterizes both his art and his life.

To a greater extent than those of any other members of the Pont-Aven School, the canvases of Gustave Loiseau come closest to style the of Impressionism advanced by Sisley, Monet, and Pissarro. Enjoying an international reputation and represented in numerous museum and important private collections, the paintings of Loiseau have been well known and appreciated by the public since the end of the nineteenth century. Loiseau built on the poetical landscapes of the earlier Impressionists, creating a personal vision of rural France. Although his earlier works bear much resemblance to Monet's and Sisley's paintings of the later 1880's and 1890's, Loiseau's later works display a bolder, yet exquisitely nuanced palette, and a signature brushwork which is so masterfully employed in Le port de Dieppe. Much of Loiseau's appeal derives from his subtlety as a colorist and his extraordinary delicacy as a painter. He was attracted to gentle light that appeared to permeate the air and embrace living things, and was able to capture an ethereal sense of atmosphere on canvas. His finest works are captivating images of beauty, harmony, and refined eloquence. Le port de Dieppe, painted in 1926, is a truly exceptional example of Loiseau's mature style. It depicts one of his favored subjects and beautifully illustrates his individuality and extraordinary sensitivity as an artist.

Exhibitions:
Salon des Indépendants, Paris, France, from 1891
Le Barc de Boutteville, Paris, France, from 1891
Galeries Durand-Ruel, Paris, France, from 1894
Salons of the Société Nationale des Beaux Art, Paris, France, debuted 1895
Musée Pissarro, Pointoise, France, 1981
Didier Imbert Fine Art, Paris, France, 1985

Museums:
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York
The Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, England
Château-Musée, Dieppe, France
The Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge, England
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rennes, France
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen, France
Musée de Pont-Aven, Pont-Aven, France
Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
Le Petit Palais - Musée d'Art Moderne, Geneva, Switzerland

References:
Thiébault-Sisson, Gustave Loiseau, exhibition catalog, Georges Petit, Paris, 1930
Gustave Loiseau, exhibition catalog, Musée de Pont-Aven, 1964
Mady Epstein, "Gustave Loiseau," Vision sur les arts, Bèziers, 1975
Jean Melias Kyriazi, Gustave Loiseau, historiographe de la Seine, Bibliothèque des Arts, Paris, 1978
Gustave Loiseau, exhibition catalog, Musée Pissarro, Pointoise, 1981
Rétrospective Gustave Loiseau, 1865-1935, exhibition catalog, Didier Imbert Fine Art, Paris, 1985
Judy Le Paul, Gauguin and the Impressionists at Pont-Aven, Abbeville Press, New York, 1987
E. Bénézit Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs, Editions Gründ
Thieme-Becker Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, E.A. Seemann Verlag Leipzig