Henry Moret (1856-1913) was a distinguished French Post-Impressionist landscape painter whose long career established him as one of the most important artistic bridges between the Pont-Aven school and the Impressionist tradition. Moret resided and worked in Brittany alongside Paul Gauguin and the Pont-Aven artists, and throughout his career he rarely left this region of France, which would remain the essential subject of his art.

In 1889 Moret stayed at Marie Poupée's Inn in Le Pouldu alongside Gauguin, whose direct influence would transform his practice. This close proximity to Gauguin during a formative moment in the older master's development of Synthetism gave Moret a firsthand exposure to the theoretical and formal innovations that would soon reshape European art. Coastal views became the dominant theme of Moret's work beginning in 1890, when he worked around the Lorient area, and the rugged cliffs, storm-swept beaches, and open sea vistas of the Breton coast would occupy him for the remainder of his career.

In 1895 Moret signed an agreement with the distinguished art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, an arrangement that freed him from financial concerns and allowed him to devote himself fully to his practice. That same year Gauguin left Pont-Aven. These parallel events marked a significant shift in Moret's own style, and his canvases began to move within the broader Impressionist realm toward the new theoretical possibilities offered by Synthetism. Moret rarely restrained himself with color or confined himself to a tonal palette; instead he embraced saturated, expressive color as his primary expressive tool. Light played an important role in his work, but usually in the way that it intensified rather than modulated his chromatic choices.

After Moret's death in 1913, Durand-Ruel reflected on his significance, observing that Moret occupied a unique position in the evolution of art at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, uniquely able to fuse together two fundamentally opposing styles: the Synthetism of Pont-Aven and Impressionism. His paintings are held today in the Musée d'Orsay and in significant international collections.