La Maison des Sculpteurs

Pont-Aven is a small town on the River Aven in southern Finistère, a few kilometres from the sea, and it owes its fame to a group of painters who gathered here in the late nineteenth century and changed the course of modern art. La Maison des Sculpteurs belongs to that artistic landscape, and the best way to approach it is through the story of the town and of the artists who made it famous. Sculpture has its own place in that story, and a visit to Pont-Aven can include a look at the way artists worked in three dimensions as well as in paint.

The Pont-Aven School grew up around Paul Gauguin, who first came to the town in 1886 and returned several times until 1894. He found a landscape of granite, gorse and rushing water, peasants in traditional dress and a community of other painters who stayed at the boarding house of Marie-Jeanne Gloanec. Together with Émile Bernard, Paul Sérusier and others, Gauguin developed a style that used flat areas of strong colour and bold outlines, known as Synthetism, which broke with Impressionism and influenced the Nabis and later movements. Sérusier's small painting The Talisman, made in 1888 on the banks of the Aven in the Bois d'Amour, became a founding work of the Nabis, and the wood is still a pleasant place to walk.

Gauguin was also a sculptor and ceramicist. During his Breton years he carved wooden panels, such as the famous relief Soyez amoureuses vous serez heureuses, made at Le Pouldu in 1889, and modelled pottery that mixed Breton shapes with Japanese and Peruvian influences. His work in these media shows an interest in craft and primitive art that fed into his painting, and it is a reminder that the Pont-Aven group was concerned with many forms of making. The town's own tradition includes carved wood, granite and the decorated stone crosses and calvaries that stand in churchyards across Brittany.

Pont-Aven itself is a pleasant place to explore. The river runs through the centre over a series of granite boulders, with old watermills along its banks, and a footpath follows the water from the town to the Bois d'Amour. The Musée des Beaux-Arts de Pont-Aven shows paintings from the school and local life, and the Chapelle de Trémalo, in the nearby village of Nizon, holds the wooden crucifix that inspired Gauguin's Yellow Christ. Galleries, crêperies and shops selling the town's famous butter biscuits, the galettes de Pont-Aven, line the streets. The coast, with the beach at Le Pouldu and the cliffs of the Finistère shore, lies a short drive away.

The town suits art lovers, walkers and families, and it combines well with a day on the coast. Allow a few hours. Opening arrangements for small galleries and workshops vary, so check locally with the tourist office.