Gustave Loiseau

Gustave Loiseau (1865-1935)

Gustave Loiseau is one of the most poetic and sensitive of the Post-Impressionists. His work shows the influence of Impressionist masters such as Alfred Sisley and Camille Pissarro and he briefly took advice from Paul Gauguin, whilst being a great admirer of Corot. Loiseau experimented with Pointillism, but developed his own style. He is considered to be a pure landscape artist, painting from direct observation of nature in a manner which is reminiscent of Claude Monet. Like many French artists, Gustave Loiseau divided his life between a studio in Paris, necessary for meeting dealers and colleagues and attending exhibitions, touring in search of new motifs, and spending time in a part of the country with familial associations. For Loiseau, this was Pontoise, on the river Oise about twenty-two miles north-west of Paris. Loiseau’s father, a butcher, had moved to the Ile-Saint-Louis in the centre of the capital in 1870, when Gustave was five. His parents retired and moved back to Pontoise a decade later, allowing Loiseau to explore the gentle, fertile rural landscape around the town, which had provided such a rich fund of subjects for Camille Pissarro when he lived there in the 1870s and early 1880s.