Maufra

Maxime Maufra (1861-1918)

A native of Brittany, Maxime Maufra was not formally trained as an artist and at first worked in commerce, painting only in his spare time. Although he submitted two paintings to the Salon of 1886, he did not take up painting as full-time profession until 1890. In that year he made his first visit to Pont-Aven, where he met Paul Gauguin and Paul Serusier. Two years later he settled in Montmartre in Paris, with a studio at the Bateau-Lavoir. He continued to spend a considerable amount of time in Brittany throughout the early 1890’s, meeting several of the other painters working at Pont-Aven and Le Pouldu. Like Gauguin, Serusier and Charles Filiger, he contributed to the decoration of the inn of Marie Henry at Le Pouldu. Unlike many of these artists, however, Maufra preferred to depict quiet, almost Symbolist landscapes devoid of figures. His friendship with Gauguin remained a close one until the latter’s departure for Tahiti, and the elder artist continued to encourage him in his work. Maufra spent his summers working in Brittany, a practice he maintained throughout his career, although he soon found Pont-Aven too crowded with artists and chose instead to live and work in more isolated communities, among fishermen and peasants. As Caroline Boyle-Turner has noted, ‘throughout his life, he retained his love of Breton subjects, exploring them again and again.’ Although he painted mainly in Brittany, Maufra also worked at various points on the Normandy coast, in and around Paris, and occasionally in Touraine and the South of France. Further afield, he also visited the Highlands of Scotland in 1895-1896, and Algeria in 1913. Despite the strong influence of the Impressionists, Pointillists and Pont-Aven School on his work, Maufra remained an independent and intuitive painter, recording the elusive qualities of nature with imaginative use of colour, bold brushwork, and a powerful technique.