This artist’s colony developed in the 1860s, and soon became popular with Americans studying in Paris. It attained fame with Paul Gauguin, who first visited in 1886.
Bernard
Paul Gauguin inspired and launched the Nabis during the late 1880s at Pont-Aven. They first exhibited in 1889, and published their manifesto in 1890, by which time he had moved onto another project.
One of the paintings he made in 1888 is quite unlike any other that he made in his career: The Talisman, which became an icon for the Nabis. Is it abstract?
Little-known now, and only for his paintings of harvesters and gleaners, in his day he was at the leading edge of the Naturalist revolution, painting scientists.
Seaweed is one of the few ‘crops’ confined to the coast. Its harvesting and processing, performed almost exclusively by women, has been shown in paintings of Brittany, particularly by Gauguin and his circle.
From 1886, the colony at Pont-Aven was dominated by the struggling former stockbroker Paul Gauguin. Among his friends was Émile Bernard. Here are some of the works from that period.
The Eclectic Light Company 