Boats On The Aven By émile Dezaunay - Brittany

Oil on canvas, signed lower left.
Dimensions without frame 54 x 65 cm, with frame 70 x 80 cm.
Émile Dezaunay (1854-1938) is a painter of the Pont-Aven school, born in Nantes. It was Jules-Élie Delaunay who recommended him to enter the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris where he joined his studio in 1875. He was also a student of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. He participated in the Triennial Exhibition of Fine Arts in Nantes in 1886, an exhibition to which established painters who had participated in the Paris Salon were invited. It was on this occasion that Émile Dezaunay met Maxime Maufra and a great friendship was born between the two men. It was Maufra who introduced him to Pont-Aven in 1890. He stayed at the Gloanec pension and met Gauguin, with whom he painted for two summers in a row at Pouldu. From 1892, he frequented Aristide Briand and the poet Victor-Émile Michelet in Maxime Maufra's studio at the Bateau-Lavoir in Montmartre. That same year, he exhibited at the second exhibition of Impressionist and Symbolist painters alongside Émile Bernard, Maurice Denis, Charles Filiger, Maxime Maufra, and Paul Sérusier. Dezaunay never spoke of the teaching he received or the theories of light; for him, only the Neo-Impressionists' freedom of expression mattered. A very personal technique with a choppy touch set him apart from his colleagues. He is present in numerous museums.