Gustave Loiseau

Gustave Loiseau was born in Paris in 1865, where he grew up and studied at the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs. In 1890 he moved to Pont-Aven in Bretagne to work with Paul Gauguin and other members of the Pont Aven School.

At this time Gauguin was absent, but he exerted a vicarious influence on Loiseau through the other painters, such as Maxime Maufra and Emile Bernard. The time he spent with these artists led him to a stronger structure and freer brushstroke in his subsequent work.

In 1894, Durand-Ruel, a leading art dealer and champion of the Impressionists, began handling Loiseau's work. It was at around this time that Gauguin returned from his first trip to Tahiti, and in the five months before he set off again, taught Loiseau directly at Pont-Aven. In addition to Gauguin's style, one can also see the influence of Pissarro and the pointillism of Seurat in Louiseau's technique.

In 1895, Loiseau moved to Moret-sur-Loing and started painting the rivers and hills there. Like many other impressionist painters, he was fond of travel, and he painted landscapes in various parts of France, including the Normandy coast, Fecamp, Etretat, Saint Jouin, Le Havre, and Marseille. Between 1905 and 1910, he painted a series of landscapes in the neighborhood of Rouen. He returned to Paris in his later years, lived in an apartment in Quai d'Anjou and painted scenes from city life.

From 1893 Louiseau exhibited in Paris at the Salon des Independants and at the Salon de la Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts from 1895. Between 1890 and 1896 he regularly exhibited at the Post Impressionist shows. His paintings can be found in important collections on both sides of the Atlantic, including the Albright-Knox Art Gallery (Buffalo), Chateau Museum (Dieppe), Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City), and Ashmolean Museum (Oxford). The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) also houses three Louiseau's works in the renowned Robert Lehman Collection of Art.