Painting by Gustave Loiseau

Gustave Loiseau (1865-1935) – French post-impressionist artist. He was born into a family of a Parisian shopkeeper, a meat trader. Since childhood, he dreamed of becoming an artist.

The father of the future artist, when he realized that his son was unlikely to inherit his profession, sent the boy to study with his friend, a decorator, since he considered this profession worthy of respect, and invariably bringing a stable income.

In 1887, Gustave Loiseau received a small inheritance, which allowed him to enter the School of Decorative Arts.

After studying for a year, he realized that he was not studying exactly what he wanted to do in life and left school. But since he still needed money, he worked as a decorator for some time, and among other apartments, he renovated the apartment of the landscape artist Fernand Quigon.

The accumulated funds allowed Loiseau to finally begin studying to become an artist and he entered the studio of the landscape painter Fernand Just Quignon, who attracted him with his light and airy painting.

But Loiseau did not like the fact that the teacher created his paintings in the studio from sketches, as many French artists did at that time. In May 1890, the young artist went to Pont-Aven, where he rented a room in a cheap hotel and for the first time began to paint landscapes directly from life.

From then on, the artist left Paris every summer, most often to Brittany, to paint landscapes. All the seasonal changes in nature can be traced in his paintings. Often the artist painted the same garden not only at different times of the year, but also at different times of the day.

During the 1910s, Loiseau developed his own painting technique, the so-called cross-hatching, which gives the artist’s canvases their own special, easily recognizable style.

The artist sold his first paintings in 1891 after an exhibition at the Salon des Indépendants. His works attracted the attention of the famous Rouen collector François Depoux, who bought two of Loiseau’s canvases.

In 1894, in Brittany, Loiseau met Paul Durand-Ruel, a prestigious Parisian agent who was involved in the sale of paintings by Claude Monet and other French impressionists, and who took over all of the artist’s financial affairs.

At the end of his life, Loiseau had a studio on the Quai d’Anjou in Paris, from the window of which he often painted views of the city.

The artist died in Paris in 1935.