Woman From Pontivy With A Pipe By Louis-henri Nicot—henriot Factory—brittany

Polychrome earthenware, circa 1930.
Henriot Manufactory.

Louis-Henri Nicot (1878 – 1944):

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 World War I, Nicot became one of the leading Breton sculptors. From the outset, he did not count himself among 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. He also created works outside Brittany, such as the Monument to the Army of the Rhineland Occupation 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 designs for them featuring distinctly local themes that played on the enduring nature of a certain staid image of Brittany—unless, that is, the approach was ethnographic, given the evident precision of the costumes. Thanks to Nicot, Brittany regained its reassuring and highly conservative image—one that artists advocating for greater modernity were attempting to dispel through the decorative arts.

Regular exhibitions, numerous busts, steles, and commemorative works, a consistent 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 making 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.