"The fisherman Subject in cast iron with black patina Titled on the base Height: 22 cm

Henry MORET (1856-1913) L'Averse, Brittany coast, 1902 Oil on canvas, signed lower left Exhibition label on reverse 65 x 92 cm PROVENANCE : Finistère private collection (Estate) EXHIBITIONS : 1966, Paris, Galerie Durand-Ruel, January 5 - 29, 1966, Henry Moret, no. 28. 1994, Paris, Galerie l'Ergastère, May 6 - July 13, 1994, Henry Moret, page 26, reproduction page 27. 2021, Quimper, musée des beaux-arts, June 24 - October 4, 2021, Henry Moret 1856-1913, De Pont-Aven à l'impressionnisme en Bretagne, no. 65 reproduction page 133. BIBLIOGRAPHY : Jean-Yves Rolland and Marie-Bénédicte Baranger, Henry Moret, Plomelin, Éditions Palantines, 2002, reproduction page 96. "The work of Henry Moret (1850-1913), a major painter of the Pont-Aven School, is now well known. But his life as an artist remains something of a mystery. He was a solitary master of his time. So when Wladislaw Slewinski organized a dinner to celebrate Paul Gauguin's return to Le Pouldu in 1894, Moret declined the invitation and preferred to go and work in Groix. His life as a landscape artist, constantly on the move from Houat to Ouessant, remains astonishing. In 1894, he chose Doëlan as his home port, more lively than Le Pouldu, and returned there after his long peregrinations to paint in his studio the drawings and gouaches he had taken on the spot. This gave him a certain stability, and came at a time when the famous Durand-Ruel gallery, from the heroic days of Impressionism, decided to buy his paintings and showcase his work in exhibitions. At the age of 44, Moret was able to lead a life that suited him: Doëlan was also, and perhaps above all, about hunting, fishing and playing cards in the bistro with his local friends. We know almost nothing about his itinerant life and the choices he made over the years, which led him to spend one month in Ouessant and the next in Douarnenez or Groix. He knows the Breton coasts inside out, and perhaps chooses according to the seasons and activities, such as seaweed burning. It also depends on the availability of accommodation and local contacts. So there are "privileged" places where he comes and goes to work. Raguénez en Névez has been one of them, at least since 1896. The site, close to Port-Manech, is easily accessible by boat from Doëlan, avoiding the long detour to Pont-Aven. Painting from the island of Raguénez is interesting for the painter because there's the island in the foreground, then the sea and finally the nearby coast in the background. L'averse, côte de Bretagne is part of a series of four paintings showing the house of the Marrec family, the island's farmers. Moret may well have stayed at this farm, for in his paintings he depicts the house from different angles, and it becomes the major element of the composition. And he seems familiar with the people, as evidenced by the subjects of two paintings. In L'averse côte de Bretagne, we see a man and two women, one with a red headdress, the other white, observing the state of the sea and a heavy shower in the sky. The fisherman is waiting for the weather to calm and has temporarily abandoned his two traps, oars and rigging, waiting to join his dinghy in the shelter below to go fishing. These three people, the man and the two women in different-colored headdresses, can be seen again in another painting, Gros temps à Raguénez (Sotheby's sale, London, June 29, 1994, lot 148), where they are closely observing the crashing waves, no doubt awaiting the arrival of the wreck's seaweed. In contrast to the painting L'Île de Raguénez, Bretagne (Washington, National Gallery of Art), where the house is shown in bright sunshine with a calm sea in an almost idyllic setting, Moret expresses great tension in L'averse côte de Bretagne, symbolically conveying the people's expectation of the violence of the elements. The canvas's foreground is built on a relationship between a strong green and a pink. This has characterized Moret's art ever since he adopted the principles of pontavenian synthetism through contact with Gauguin. The strong lines of the ground in the middle left and of the house fix the viewer's gaze. The whole of the upper part and towards the right are painted differently to convey ephemeral atmospheric effects. Painting rain or a downpour is undoubtedly one of the most difficult things a landscape artist can do. Such a scene and such a landscape may seem simple at first glance, but as the viewer observes, it becomes clear how Moret skilfully plays with a few elements to guide the eye, such as the piles of seaweed in the middle of the picture.