Gustave Loiseau

1865-1937

Loiseau was born in Paris, the son of a butcher from Pontoise. He was apprenticed in 1880 to a house painter and then to a decorator, a job which he despised, but which aroused his interest in art. Loiseau discovered the countryside of Pontoise when his parents retired there in 1881; a legacy from his grandmother in 1887 allowed him to devote his life to landscape painting.

Gustave Loiseau works show the influence of Impressionist masters such as Sisley and Camille Pissarro and he took advice from Paul Gauguin, whilst being a great admirer of Corot. Loiseau experimented with Pointillism, but developed his own style. He is considered to be a pure landscape artist, painting from direct observation of nature in a manner which is reminiscent of Claude Monet.

In 1890, he went to Pont-Aven in Brittany for the first time, fraternizing with the artists there, especially Paul Gauguin and Émile Bernard. After experimenting with Pointillism, he adopted his own approach to Post-Impressionism, painting landscapes directly from nature. His technique known as en treillis or cross-hatching gave his works a special quality, now recognized as his speciality.

Loiseau's paintings, revealing his passion for the seasons from the beginning of spring to the harvests later in the autumn, often depict the same orchard or garden scene as time goes by. Series of this kind, which also include cliffs, harbours or churches, are reminiscent of Claude Monet. Although Loiseau did not complete many portraits, he often painted people at work: dockers together with their boats, villagers leaving a Sunday service in Brittany or arriving at the market in Pont-Aven, or even carriages in Paris driving across the Place de la Bastille and the Étoile.

The work of Gustave Loiseau is represented in the Musée d’Orsay, Paris; the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen; the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; the Marubeni Collection, Japan; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City.