Henry Moret

A post-impressionist and, for the most part, a marine painter, one of the members of the Pont-Avene school, a follower of Paul Gauguin, famous for his landscapes of coastal Brittany, made in rich and saturated colors.
Henry Moret was an active and hardworking artist. He not only created a large number of paintings, but also united around him a number of painters who worked in Brittany after the departure of Gauguin. Moret’s works were repeatedly exhibited at the Salon of Independent and he was an active participant in the Autumn Salon. Thanks to his acquaintance with the owner of the gallery, famous artist and collector Durand-Ruelle, he held solo exhibitions in Paris and New York.

Key ideas:

– Henry Moret was a unique artist, harmoniously combining two absolutely opposite styles: Impressionism and Synthetism of the Pont-Aven School. He was always interested in light effects, like many other artists of that time, who were in search of new ways of artistic expression.
– To paint nature in its original form, he went further away from urbanized Paris – to Brittany, where he met Paul Gauguin, Emile Bernard and other members of the Pont-Aven school. They helped him discover a new artistic method, making Henry Moret’s painting more colorful and simplistic.
– Nevertheless, Gauguin’s Synthetism only partially influenced the artist’s style, which always remained individual. Over time, Moret developed his own style based on understanding nature and immense love for it.
– Most of all, Henry Moret loved depicting sea in its different states: calm and sun-drenched, gloomy and dark, or raging, crashing its waves against the rocks. He was a restless admirer of the sea element and created several thousand oil paintings and sketches for marine themes (marines).
– In the mature period of work, he concentrated only on landscapes and was interested in depicting intangible – sunset, storm and other natural phenomena. Apart from marines, the artist created many landscapes depicting the nature of Brittany and its inhabitants.
– Famous painter Maxim Mofra wrote about the artist, “He was in love with Brittany, where he spent his entire life, with its small ports, deserted hills and fishing boats. During walks along the coast, which he loved so much, he noticed the slightest changes in nature and reproduced them on canvas with stunning precision and the soul of a true artist … “.