French, 1865-1935

Loiseau was born in Paris in 1865, where he grew up and studied at the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs. When he was 25 he moved to Pont-Aven in Bretagne to work with Gauguin and other members of the Pont-Aven School. While he was at Pont-Aven, he met and became close with two other post-impressionists, Maxime Maufra and Emile Bernard. The time he spent with these artists led Loiseau to a stronger structure and freer brushstroke in his subsequent work.

He started to exhibit his paintings at the Paris Salon des Indépendants in 1893 and the Salon of La Nationale of1895.

Loiseau traveled considerably in France and became known for his landscapes of the River Seine, the cliffs of Dieppe and the areas around Dordogne valley.

French, 1865-1935

Since Les Trés Riches Heures du duc de Berry, snow landscapes have seduced painters, in particular those of the Flemish and Dutch Schools. However, the Impressionists were the first to seek out to capture the nuances of their chromatic values. The blue shadows in the snow, nature enveloped in a carpet of white snow under a low and grey sky, mornings of white frost or the melting of snow under a sunset. As in the notes of Pissarro, "Nature in winter is colorful". Silhouettes of leafless trees, the slate grey of rooftops, an abandoned pumpkin in a field, a magpie perched on a fence, all these details emerge as if by magic from contours erased by the the coat of snow. Heir to the Impressionists, from whom he adopted their style, in spite of some years spent in Pont Aven, Gustave Loiseau is highly sensitive to climactic variations. From 1895, in the summer he traveled across Brittany and Normandy, where he painted the vibrations of light and sky on the water. In the winter, he visited the important locals of Impressionism in the Ile-de-France: Pontoise, Auvers, Moret. With a quick brushstroke, he brings to life the surface of the canvas to create the effects of the mist, the ice, and of the snow. This painting, realized during the winter of 1901, the year that the Galerie Durand-Ruel offered to Loiseau his first exclusive exhibition, is a perfect illustration. Caressed by a pale sun, the walls of the house are painted by little touches of orange, of rose, of yellow and of ochre, punctuated with ultramarine. At the end of the path, the horizon line dissolves into the frosty mist, treated with a gamut of bluish pastels. Le Loing à Moret, effet de neige, offers a cold palette, where the whites and creams are adorned with violet, green and blue. In this way, far from a symphony of white, this snow scene offers a surprising palette.