Paul Sérusier

Charles Mackie
Private Collection, France
Private Collection, New York

Valle d'Aoste, Italy, Centro Saint-Benin e Museo Archeologico Regionale, Gauguin e i suoi amici pittori in Bretagna: Pont-Aven et le Pouldu, 1993, no. 17, illustrated in color in the catalogue

Marcel Guicheteau, Paul Sérusier, vol. II, Pontoise, 1989, no. 29, illustrated p. 88

Executed on a paper pulp board. There is some minor denting to the extreme edges of the board but these do not interfere with the image. Two pieces of tape on the reverse at the top edge from a previous mount. Some minor surface dirt. Work is in very good condition.
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There are pencil sketches below the image which include the word Gauguin as well as a pencil sketch on the reverse.

The summer of 1888, two years before he painted the current work, marked a decisive turning point for Sérusier. While completing his studies at the Académie Julian, the artist left Paris for the summer and stayed at Gloanec's Pension in the Breton town of Pont-Aven. Though initially intimidated by Gauguin and his circle of artists at Pont-Aven, Sérusier was finally encouraged by Émile Bernard to approach Gauguin. They went to Bois d'Amour and Gauguin guided Sérusier through a landscape painting. The young artist was emboldened by Gauguin and relished the release from the academic training to which he was accustomed. The artist returned to Gauguin during the following Easter holiday and wrote to Maurice Denis, "I arrived yesterday on these beautiful beaches where I shall spend two weeks alone with Gauguin, without distractions, without cares, and without apéritifs. I am seized by  a fever to work, all is well... I believe that I shall at last do something worth while" (quoted in John Rewald, Post-Impressionism, From van Gogh to Gauguin, New York, 1956, p. 276-77). This was the beginning of the artist's fruitful collaboration with the artists of the Pont-Aven school. He held a prominent and respected place among a group of young and impressionable artists including  Édouard Vuillard, Pierre Bonnard, Félix Vallotton and Paul Ranson.

By 1890, when he painted La servante bretonne, Sérusier was at the height of his involvement with the movement and had garnered much respect from his fellow painters for his ability to imbue his subjects with profound expressiveness. He rivaled Gauguin in his willingness to abstract his composition into deconstructed blocks of patterns and unmodulated color blocks. In the current work, Sérusier heightens the intensity of his palette and revels in the patterned curtain at right while simplifying the planes of the background into pure color fields. This work is a study for a painting on a larger scale which he executed in the same year (see Guicheteau, op. cit., pp. 198-99). Even on this smaller scale, Sérusier is able to relay an intensity of presence that personifies the artistic concerns of the Pont-Aven school.

 

Fig. 1 Paul Ranson, Paul Sérusier and France Ranson in Ranson's studio