Contact gallery for price		Gustave Loiseau French, 1865 – 1935 Meules Oil on canvas 23 x 32 inches (60 x 81 cm) Framed: 32 x 40 inches Signed and dated: G. Loiseau 1903 Provenance: Durand-Ruel Paris Galerie des Granges, Geneva Exhibited: Salon d’Arte Contemporain, Portrait d’Une Collection, Rouen, 1991 Literature: To be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné on the artist being prepared by Didier Imbert   Gustave Loiseau was born in Paris in 1865. He spent a year at the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs in Paris and then entered the studio of the French landscape painter Fernand Just Quignon in 1889.  The following year, he moved to Pont-Aven in Bretagne where he came into contact with members of the Pont-Aven School and artists like Maxime Maufra, Henri Moret, and Emile Bernard. He also met Paul Gauguin in 1894 upon the latter’s return from Tahiti.  Loiseau assimilated a freer style of painting en plein air and his subsequent works possess a greater sense of structure and feature freer brushstrokes.  This method was the hallmark of the Pont-Aven artist’s colony, enjoyed profusely by Loiseau and he returned there each summer and, with Maufra and Moret, participated in an exhibit featuring area artists.  In a review of the show Loiseau was critiqued as having a “clear-cut personal style, directly inspired by nature, particularly in his oil rapid sketches in which the color is delicate and harmonious.” In the winters, the artist worked in his Paris studio, often reliving on canvas what impressed him most in Brittany, and this served as the backbone of his style and technique.  In Pont-Aven, he experimented most effectively with light and how its various intensities affected its surroundings.  By 1893, he was under contract with the galleries of the Impressionist patron Durand-Ruel and, no longer feeling the pressures of marketing, was freer to be daring and further cultivate his interpretations of nature.  By 1895, Loiseau was exhibiting in Paris at the Salon des Independants and at the Salon de la Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts. Between 1890 and 1896, he regularly exhibited at the Post Impressionist shows. Loiseau often traveled and his paintings are very diverse; his oeuvre includes landscapes, marines, flowers, and still lifes, amongst other subjects.  He traveled with Gauguin all across France, and everywhere he visited became a source of inspiration. At the turn of the century he spent a good deal of time along the coast of Normandy, passing through the fishing ports of Dieppe, Fecamp, and Etretat, his style constantly evolving.  Among the French Impressionists and Post-Impressionist, Loiseau is one of the most representative painters.  He reflected on his own career: “I recognize no merit other than being sincere, I work…and try myself to best translate the impression I receive from nature.  My instinct is my sole guide and I am proud of resembling no one.” Meules is a beautiful painting that displays the inspirational effect the French countryside had on Loiseau. Here the artist has chosen to depict bundles of hay in a field waiting to be taken in after the harvest. The overall palette is simply stunning; the rich gold tones of the hay make a beautiful contrast to the azure sky, and the deeper blues and greens of the rolling hills in the distance. The thickness and rapidity of the brushstrokes impart the painting with an energy and texture that truly make it come alive.   Museums: Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo Chateau Museum, Dieppe Nelson-Atkins Museum of rt, Kansas City Ashmolean Museum, Oxford The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York