Henry Moret (1856 - 1913)

The most discreet of the painters of the Pont-Aven School. This Norman by birth, but Breton at heart, devoted most of his work to Brittany, whose wild landscapes and rough seas attracted many artists in search of renewal.

Moret's arrival in Brittany in 1875 was due to his military service. He arrived in Lorient and met the chief medical officer Jules La Villette who noticed in his young conscript a taste for art. He recommended him to Ernest Corroler, the drawing teacher who taught his daughters. It was this same teacher who prepared him for the Beaux-Arts competition in Paris, where he was brilliantly accepted in March 1876. It was in the workshops of Lehmann and Laurens that he perfected his training. In 1880, Moret exhibited his first painting "The beach of Loqueltaz at low tide" at the Salon des Artistes Français.

Once his training was completed, he was the first to move to Le Pouldu in 1881. He joined Pont-Aven in 1887, where he met Paul Gauguin, Émile Bernard, Émile Jourdan, Maxime Maufra and Charles Filiger. In 1895, Moret met the famous promoter of Impressionism, the gallery owner Paul Durand-Ruel. Their collaboration did not end until Moret's death. Two thirds of his works were sold by Durand-Ruel in Paris and New York.

A painter of landscapes, enamoured of the sea and its lights, Moret left behind a body of work of about nine hundred paintings. "By combining the aesthetics of Japanese-inspired simplicity with impressionist technique, Moret created a magical blend of simple composition and captivating colour. He is in the most important collections, and museums, around the world. Moret has a stable price tag, although he has never reached the prices of the impressionist masters. One of his paintings, "Les pêcheuses", fetched more than three hundred thousand euros in Brest in 2017.