Henry Moret
1856–1913 · French Impressionist painter of the Pont-Aven colony
Henry Moret (Cherbourg, 1856 – Paris, 1913) was a French Impressionist painter associated with the Pont-Aven colony in Brittany. He is remembered for his richly coloured coastal landscapes and for fusing the Synthetism of Gauguin with Impressionist brushwork.
After his military service in Lorient, he met the marine painter Ernest Corroller, who taught him landscape painting in the manner of Corot and Courbet. He studied in Paris under Gérôme and, from about 1880, under Jean-Paul Laurens at the Académie Julian. In 1888 he arrived at Pont-Aven, where he joined Gauguin and his followers. After Gauguin left in 1891 he developed a style of his own, with smaller flecks of paint and a focus on sunsets and storms he painted around 1909.
From 1895 he worked with Paul Durand-Ruel, whose galleries in Paris, London and New York showed his work. He completed more than six hundred oil paintings, along with some 800 watercolours and drawings. His legacy lies in the synthesis of two opposing currents, a point already noted in posthumous catalogues.
Works (4)
Oil on canvas dated 1896, whose title points to a coastal spot called Port Manech, probably on the Breton coast. The available information says nothing about its commission or reception, so any detailed reading would be speculative. Today Henry Moret's painting is held by the Hermitage.
Oil on canvas by Henry Moret, dated 1900, showing a coastal view. Without reference texts, the exact location and the circumstances of its creation cannot be specified. It is held at the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne and belongs to the seascape genre, where the shoreline structures the composition.
Landscape by Henry Moret, painted in 1902 in oil on canvas, showing the Aven river near Pont-Aven in Brittany. It belongs to Post-Impressionism, a movement that simplifies forms and favours flat colour and structured composition over a faithful rendering of light. With the available information, further details about its commission or reception cannot be confirmed.
Where to see the work
- Wallraf–Richartz Museum Cologne · 2
- Hermitage Museum Saint Petersburg · 1
- Pont-Aven museum Pont-Aven · 1
Teachers and pupils
Studied with
- Jean-Léon Gérôme 1824–1904
- Jean-Paul Laurens 1838–1921
Curiosities
A quiet relationship
In 1893 Moret met Célina Chatenet, a dressmaker who gave him financial support until his 1895 contract with Durand-Ruel relieved him of money worries. They married in 1910, three years before his death in Paris at the age of 56.
A painter of islands and coasts
Every year he travelled along the southern coast of Brittany, stopping at villages such as Larmor, Pouldu and Doëlan. He also spent time on islands such as Groix, Houat, Ushant and Belle-Île-en-Mer, and painted landscapes in Normandy and the Netherlands, including the beach at Egmond aan Zee.