Pont-Aven School (painting)
The Pont-Aven School was an influential group of painters active in the late 19th century in the commune of Pont-Aven, Brittany, France. This diverse colony comprised artists from various nationalities, including French, American, British, and others, who sought to break away from traditional academic norms and bourgeois society. Among the key figures was Paul Gauguin, whose arrival in 1886 significantly shaped the school’s identity and artistic direction. The Pont-Aven School is noted for developing a painting technique called synthetism, which emphasized flat surfaces and bold color combinations, moving away from the lighter, more transient effects of Impressionism. Artists like Émile Bernard and Maurice Denis played pivotal roles in defining and promoting this technique.
Despite its radical innovations, the Pont-Aven School remained overshadowed by Impressionism but is recognized as a precursor to modern art movements, including symbolism and fauvism. The school's significance lies not only in its artistic contributions but also in reflecting the artists' disillusionment with industrial society and their desire for a more harmonious relationship with nature. Although many artists continued to inhabit the commune into the early 20th century, the school’s most notable period was during Gauguin's tenure, culminating in the 1889 exhibition that paired Impressionist and Synthetist works.
Pont-Aven School (painting)
The Pont-Aven school was a heterogeneous group of artists installed at the commune of Pont-Aven, in Brittany, a region in the northwest of France. The artists’ colony emerged in the late nineteenth century and brought together artists of different nationalities—notably Emile Dezaunay (French), William Lamb Picknell (American), Robert Bevan (British), Mogens Ballin (Danish), Jacob Meyer de Haan (Dutch), and Wladyslaw Slewinski (Polish)—who sought to distance themselves from bourgeois society and academic training They followed the example of Paul Gauguin, who moved there in 1886. The best known French artists that were involved with the Pont-Aven school were Paul Sérusier, Maxime Maufra, Emile Bernard, Marcel Gromaire, and Paul Colin. The Pont-Aven school is a post-impressionist school of painting that introduced the method of synthetism, rejecting both impressionist and pointillist techniques, though many artists that belonged to the group employed a combination of all the above techniques.
Brief History
Gauguin first visited Pont-Aven in July 1886. He returned in 1888 and stayed there for four years, until 1891, when he moved to Tahiti. He again visited the commune in 1894. Pont-Aven owes its reputation to Gauguin. Although a significant number of artists had been installed in other Breton villages since the 1850s, the Pont-Aven group stands out for its international character. By Gauguin’s arrival in 1888, the commune had become an attraction for tourists. In 1889, he moved to the less crowded Le Pouldou (Clohars-Carnoët), also located in the department of Finistère. Gauguin repudiated impressionism, which characterized his earlier works, and proceeded to experiment further with color and form, developing a new technique called synthetism.
The differences between synthetism and cloisonnism, which the new technique succeeded, are slight. The French word "cloison" means "compartment," and cloisonnism used to describe flat colored forms with dark outlines distinguishing them from the background. Emile Bernard introduced cloisonnism to Gauguin during his stay at Pont-Aven. The technique went through a series of experiments with colored abstract forms and subsequently developed into synthetism. Most artists of the Pont-Aven school preferred the term synthetism in the description of their works. The French painter Maurice Denis provided a definition of synthetism as flat surfaces "covered with colours assembled in a certain order." Synthetism constitutes a combination, a synthesis, of three elements: the observation of nature, the sensibility of the artist in the choice of the subject matter, and its depiction with combinations of pure forms, lines, and colors. The style is not reduced, however, to the impression of the moment or the naturalistic effects of light and color. Unlike impressionism, synthetism presents solid forms and contours with its figures being slightly abstract, notably in a lack of details while featuring a total absence of perspective.
Impact
The Pont-Aven school is one of the movements grouped by the British art critic and historian Roger Fry under the category of post-impressionism, which also includes neo-impressionism, cloisonnism, synthetism, and symbolism. It emerged as a reaction against impressionism. The school became famous for its connection to the invention of synthetism by Gauguin as well as its importance as an artistic resort and a tourist attraction. The term "school" in the case of Pont-Aven does not indicate formal artistic training or a homogenous style of painting. The first artists to arrive in Pont-Aven, however, before Gauguin, were American students of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. In fact, the first American artist who moved to Pont-Aven in 1865 was Robert Wylie. Nonetheless, the term Pont-Aven school applies to the artists who were attracted by the painterly innovations (and lifestyle) of Gauguin and Bernard.
The Pont-Aven school is considered to be an important precursor of modern painting. Even though many artists installed in the commune continued painting in an academic style, the history of the school reflects the artists’ imperative for creation beyond the limits of the academy. In social terms it mirrors the modern artist’s disillusionment with industrial society and the effort to reestablish a more harmonious role within nature. Ironically, the phenomenon itself of this artistic gathering in Pont-Aven was the result of industrialization and the establishment of a railway line that connected Paris to the commune of Quimper, in Brittany. Furthermore, although installed in a natural environment, the artists of Pont-Aven painted nature in their works from memory and not from direct observation, as did the impressionists.
The Pont-Aven school contributed decisively to the abstraction of forms and the developments in French modern art at the turn of the century. The paintings of Les Nabis and fauvism were founded on similar principles, but the Pont-Aven school, together with cloisonnism, is considered the precursor of symbolism. The first and only exhibition of the group, Exposition de peintures du groupe Impressioniste et Synthétiste, was organized in Paris by Gauguin and the French painter Emile Schuffenecker on the occasion of the Exposition Universelle of 1889. The show paired impressionism and synthetism and displayed works by Gauguin, Bernard, Louis Roy, Nemo, Daniel, Schuffenecker, Charles Laval, and Léon Fauche. Despite the radical innovations that the school introduced to painting, it failed to reach the reputation of impressionism and remained in its shadow. After the departure of Gauguin, artists continued to settle in Pont-Aven throughout the first half of the twentieth century.
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