Breton coastal scenes

We visited the Musee de Pont-Aven https://www.museepontaven.fr/fr/ which is an art museum celebrating the work that was done in and inspired by this part of south Brittany in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (and also later). Gaugin, some of his followers and others painted here, spent summers here and a “school” developed. The temporary exhibition was “Pont-Aven inspired impressionism”. Some of the subjects of the paintings on show were coastal places we had been to in the previous days. Rather than hunting down the locations of famous paintings, as some like to do, I prefer the opposite: noticing that a painting is of somewhere that I recognise (not necessarily entirely literally).

The first beach photo is a different view of one of the beaches painted by one of the Pont-Aven artists, at Concarneau.

The second is of Le Pouldu a place a little down the coast that some of those artists also visited and painted.

The third and fourth are places they should have gone to even if they didn’t!

A beach called Port Goulom along the Côte Sauvage on the Quiberon peninsula

Plage de Légenès at Carnac

We found them all (among many others) thanks to walks on the GR34 which has been an excellent and reliable guide along the Breton coast. https://www.mongr.fr/trouver-prochaine-randonnee/itineraire/gr-34-le-plus-maritime-des-sentiers-de-grande-randonnee

As a post-script, the Pont-Aven gallery temporary exhibition, while interesting and enjoyable, was striking for its entire (? I think) lack of women artists’ paintings or other art.