A MASTERPIECE, IN THE HISTORY OF PAINTING

Ferdinand Loyen du Puigaudeau

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Sunset in Brière – 1925 – Ferdinand Loyen du Puigaudeau

Ferdinand Loyen du Puigaudeau is a French post-impressionist painter, born in Nantes on April 4, 1864. He is the son of Emile du Puigaudeau, descendant of a family of shipowners enriched by colonial trade, but ruined since. After classical studies, he perfected his artistic gifts with trips to Italy and Tunisia.

In 1886, the date of his first known work, he met Paul Gauguin, Émile Bernard and Charles Laval, at Pont-Aven, assistant to the beginnings of what would become two years later the School of Pont-Aven.

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The Garden at Kervaudu – 1915 – Ferdinand Loyen du Puigaudeau

In 1889, during a trip to Belgium, Ferdinand Loyen du Puigaudeau became involved with the Group of XX and particularly with Guillaume Vogels, Jan Toorop and James Ensor. He also meets the realist painter and sculptor Constantin Meunier.

He exhibited a first work at the Salon of the National Society of Fine Arts in 1890 and first painted scenes of conventional genre. However, it is gradually influenced by the new aesthetic propagated by the painters of the School of Pont-Aven, but continuing its own journey and remaining mostly an impressionist painter.

Source: commons.wikimedia.org

The Customs Cabin – 1890 – Ferdinand Loyen du Puigaudeau

Nicknamed Picolo by his friends, he likes nocturnal scenes and crepuscular atmospheres. It is the “painter of fireworks, rockets, sun and gay landscapes” wrote the New York Herald in 1903. It is also the painter of the popular festivals, especially those of night.

In 1907, Ferdinand Loyen du Puigaudeau moved to the manor of Kervaudu (Le Croisic), which he rented, and where he gathered his friends the painters Jean Emile Laboureur, Emile Dezaunay, Ernest de Chamaillard, and his cousin, the writer Alphonse de Chateaubriant and the poet José-Maria de Heredia. “For 25 years, tirelessly he will paint the same sites, flowers of his garden, swamps and mills of Brière, sunsets on the sea, fields of poppies”.
He ends his life there, at Le Croisic, depressive and alcoholic on September 19, 1930.