Henry MORET (1856-1913) Lot n° 62

Cliff and beach at Pould, ca. 1895/1897 Oil on canvas. Signed lower right. 54 x 73 cm Provenance : - Primel Collection, - In the descendants. A certificate of authenticity written by Mr Jean-Yves Rolland, will be given to the purchaser at the latter's expense and in addition to the purchase slip. Henri Moret moved to Pont-Aven in June 1888. He met Gauguin, who was in the midst of his pictorial evolution. These were the months before his revolutionary painting The Vision after the Sermon, in August 1888. Of an independent temperament, Moret worked in his personal studio, not liking the promiscuity of the other painters at the Gloanec Inn. Nevertheless, his studio was the meeting and discussion place for the group that was being formed at the time, which included Gauguin, Bernard, Laval, Schuffnecker, Sérusier Chamaillard... Some of them were asked to accompany Paul Gauguin who was preparing to join Van Gogh in Arles. Only Gauguin made the trip. These artists exchanged paintings with Van Gogh maintaining a fruitful artistic dialogue and generating mutual progress. In 1889 and 1890, the group met at Marie Henry's inn in Le Pouldu. Moret's style evolved under the influence of Gauguin. He painted scenes of the Breton countryside and the seaside with colours that were particular to him and combined pure synthetism with a divided touch. From 1891, the group dispersed. Moret moved to Lorient and then in 1894 settled in Doëlan, a small peaceful fishing port. He practised his two favourite pastimes of hunting and fishing and went from place to place, staying sometimes for a day, sometimes for a month, in search of motifs. The coasts of Finistère and Morbihan, the islands (Belle-Île, Houat, Groix) have no more secrets for him. Cliff and beach at Le Pouldu According to Jean-Yves Rolland, our painting can be dated from 1895-1897. It is at this date that Paul Durand-Ruel, solicits him for the regular supply of paintings. In May 1898, the gallery organized a solo exhibition in Paris, "La Mer par Henri Moret". The influence of the dealer on the painter was notable and Moret returned to a more impressionist technique of touch during the early years of the 20th century. In Falaise et plage au Pouldu, Moret makes a synthetic observation of the landscape. Three horizontal registers follow one another. The yellows of the beach and the blue of the sky frame a broad band animated by the complementary reds and greens of the heaths and grasslands. This central strip is itself "partitioned" by the small dry stone walls that structure the hillside. This rigour is however tempered by the gentle undulations of the ridge and the sinuous patterns left by the tide on the sand. Moret succeeds, thanks to the principle of the rise of colors* learned from Gauguin, in exalting the sunny blaze of a small Breton beach in the heart of summer, which gives the canvas its full value. "How do you see these trees? Yellow, well put yellow, the most beautiful yellow of your palette. This shadow? More blue, paint it with ultramarine, and these leaves? Gauguin to Sérusier, Pont-Aven 1888.