Ferdinand Du Puigaudeau

Ferdinand du Puigaudeau (1864-1930) was a French Post-Impressionist painter whose luminous depictions of Breton landscape, sunsets, night scenes, and traditional festivals placed him within the vital artistic community that gathered around Paul Gauguin in Pont-Aven. In 1886, Puigaudeau made his first visit to the quiet seaside village of Pont-Aven, where he took a room at Gloanec's, a popular hotel for artists on a budget. As it happened, Paul Gauguin was also making his first visit at that time and staying at the same establishment, placing Puigaudeau alongside a small circle of aspiring artists in the unusual position of observing and working directly beside one of the most important painters of the late nineteenth century. Inspired by their contact with Gauguin, a number of these artists went on to create a radical new painting movement, calling themselves the Nabis, the Hebrew word for prophets.

Puigaudeau adopted several of the tenets of this new movement, including a heightened palette, simplified forms, and a vigorous brushwork that recalls Pointillism. He had a particular passion for the subtleties of light in every form, and his garden views and paintings of his home at Kervaudu are infused with warm light and unusual freshness of color. Puigaudeau began these paintings around 1907, when he and his family rented the manor depicted in many of his best pictures from Monsieur Lebreton de Fontenelle. He would remain at Kervaudu until his death in 1930.

Because of Kervaudu's location on a peninsula, the region attracted many artists to Nantes, and Puigaudeau soon found himself surrounded by his old friends Émile Dezaunay, Alexis de Broca, and Donatien Roy. The group regularly set out on painting excursions through the surrounding countryside. From 1910 to 1914, Puigaudeau happily crisscrossed the region, endlessly painting sunsets over the sea and the traditional windmills that punctuated the Breton landscape.

Puigaudeau developed close relationships with a remarkable circle of artists including Paul Gauguin, Edgar Degas, Théo van Rysselberghe, James Ensor, and Émile Bernard. Degas, with characteristic affection, referred to Puigaudeau as the Hermit of Kervaudu. His paintings are held today in French regional museums and in significant international collections, where they remain among the most warmly observed images of Breton landscape from the Post-Impressionist era.