"the Gossips" (large Version) By Louis-henri Nicot - Henriot - Brittany

Born in 1878, Louis-Henri Nicot studied art at the Beaux Arts in Rennes under Coquelin, Lenoir, and Ronsin, then in Paris under Falguière, Mercié, and Peter. During these years of highly academic training, the artist received frequent honors. He completed his studies in 1909.

Breton themes quickly began to appear in his work. After the World War I, Nicot became one of Brittany’s leading sculptors. From the outset, he did not align himself with the artists who championed the most radical modernism. He created many war memorials in Brittany : Pleurtuit in 1920, Guéméné-Penfao in 1921, and Montfort-sur-Meu in 1923. But he also created works outside Brittany, such as the Monument to the Army of the Rhineland Occupation located in Mainz. In 1922, he became a professor at the School of Applied Arts for Industry.

His collaboration with the Henriot Manufactory came about through Mathurin Méheut, a longtime acquaintance, and began in 1924. He created for them designs with a distinctly local flavor that played on the enduring nature of a certain staid image of Brittany—unless, that is, it was an ethnographic approach, given the striking precision of the costumes. Thanks to Nicot, Brittany regained its reassuring and highly conservative image—one that artists, advocates of greater modernity, were attempting to shake off through the decorative arts.

Regular exhibitions, numerous busts, memorial stones, and commemorative works, a continuous presence at the Salon des Artistes Français —honored with a gold medal in 1933—and the official recognition of the title of Knight of the Legion of Honor that same year—all contributed to make Louis-Henri Nicot an artist who was both widely recognized and universally appreciated. The artist died in 1944, while preparing to release a new series of ceramic works in Quimper.