Charles Fromuth "boats In The Port Of Concarneau" Brittany

Charles Fromuth was an American painter born in 1861 in Philadelphia and died in 1937 in Concarneau. Biography A Snow Scene, Disarmed Boats (1897), Quimper Museum of Fine Arts. The son of German-speaking immigrants, he grew up in a working-class neighborhood of Philadelphia and exercised his natural inclination for drawing by working in a commercial lithography studio. A student at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1877, he became the assistant of Thomas Eakins, an iconoclastic professor who encouraged the individual expression of his students. His work in textile design allowed him to finance his trip to Paris in 1889 to continue his studies. He was disappointed with the teaching at the Académie Julian, where he studied under William Bouguereau (1825-1905), but he was deeply inspired by the rich tones and dramatic brushwork of some of the Old Masters, notably Rembrandt (1606-1669), which he saw in museums. He looked for an inexpensive place outside the metropolis and came to Concarneau and Pont-Aven for the first time in 1890. Concarneau, a sardine port, was already an international city where a large number of artists gathered. He settled in Concarneau, taking up residence at the Hôtel de France. During the 1900 World's Fair, he discovered Japanese art and in particular Hokusai. He exhibited regularly in Europe, winning various prizes and medals and was respected by his contemporaries, European and American artists as a master of pastel drawing. His traveling exhibition in America in 1910 was, however, a commercial failure and he exhibited little thereafter[1]. After this date, he no longer exhibited and led a hermit's life entirely devoted to his pastels and charcoals representing boats fleeing under sail. His friends and buyers were painters and artists, such as Rodin in 1901 who made the special trip in the company of Frits Thaulow.