We would like to thank Jean-Yves Rolland for confirming the authenticity of the work, Paris, 16 February 2019. It will be included in the forthcoming Catalogue raisonné of paintings by Henry Moret.

Provenance:
- presumably Galerie Malingue, Paris.
- Private collection, Switzerland.

Exhibition: Pont Aven 1969, Festivale de Peinture, Musée de l'association Paul Gauguin, 15 June - 15 September 1969, no. 25.

Henry Moret was born in 1856 in the city of Cherbourg, a strategic port on the coast of Normandy. Typical for many families of the region, he followed in his father’s footsteps with a brief period in the military, before becoming a professional artist.

In 1875, during his service, he was stationed in Brittany. He was fascinated by the secluded natural beauty and the rugged landscape that had attracted other Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. Claude Monet visited the Breton coast in September 1886, and was inspired to create a series of seascapes capturing the effects of light and weather on the rough seas. The paintings that Monet created at the Breton coast are considered his first series of works.

During that same summer, the restless Post-Impressionist painter Paul Gauguin joined the artists’ colony in Pont-Aven and, together with Émile Bernard, developed the painting style known as Synthetism, characterised by flattened perspectives, flat areas of colour and pastoral themes. Until 1888 Moret was well acquainted with these newcomers to Pont-Aven and was heavily influenced by their experimental Post-Impressionist technique. At the turn of the century, however, he began to break away from Synthetism and took on a more impressionistic approach to capture the raw beauty of Brittany.

In 1895 Moret entered into a contract with Durand-Ruel, who organised two exhibitions of his paintings in New York in 1900 and 1902. Moret continued to live and work in the Breton region for the rest of his life, although Gauguin and other artists from Pont-Aven embarked on other adventures.

The three Henry Moret paintings offered here, all issuing from the same private collection, exemplarily present his artistic objectives. Painted in 1895 (lot 3213), 1898 (lot 3203) and 1910 (this lot), they reveal his development of expression in both technique and motif. Initially still heavily influenced by the Pont-Aven School, Moret increasingly combined Synthetism with his new interpretation of impressionistic techniques.