Jules Contant (1852-1920) Blois: "pont-aven"; Watercolor

Jules CONTANT (1852-1920) Blois: "Pont-Aven"; Watercolor signed lower left, located "Pont-Aven" lower right; Dimensions 26 x 36 cm From his stay at the Beaux-arts, Jules Contant retains the techniques of drawing and painting, forgetting the spirit of academism. At the same time, he was also seduced by the painters in rebellion who were at the origin of the “impressionist movement”. His early works remained fairly academic for some time. These are mostly light watercolours, much appreciated by local critics. Jules Contant starts late, at 38, in oil painting and Raffaëlli pencil. Very quickly he moved from paintings reminiscent of academicism to a more impressionistic style. He travels to all the major places of Impressionism (Normandy, Marne Valley, Pont-Aven, the Creuse Valley and the Côte d'Azur). The confrontation with the painters of Pont-Aven and the School of Crozant gave him a taste for light and colors. Around 1900, he produced many works, more and more colorful, even too colorful for the taste of some. During this same period, he was seduced by pointillism and multiplied his experiences in this direction. It is with this technique that he made one of the two large panels intended to decorate the Salle des Colonnes, headquarters of the "Société des Amis des Arts", adjoining the Salle Gaston d'Orléans at the Château de Blois where took place all the posh balls of the season. Its panel, which represents a mill of Pont-Aven (461 × 253 cm), still commands the admiration of its detractors. The other panel, more academic, is the work of Henri Sauvage (who painted a magnificent portrait of his mother for him). Tired of illness and the disappearance of his wife, Jules Contant stopped his artistic development there. He remained insensitive to the new movements of painters who took over from the pioneers of Impressionism (Fauvism, Nabism, Cubism, etc.). The region of Pont-Aven Jules Contant made many stays in Pont-Aven from the beginning of the 1890s until the middle of the 1900s. It is during this period that we can best see his evolution in contact with the painters of the School of Pont-Aven, from his very first watercolors in pastel tones to colorful and luminous pointillist oils. © Yannick Ribrioux 2011