Fernand Piet
The public weight market in Vannes , 1903
Oil on cardboard
Signed and dated on the lower right corner
Size: 52 x 75cm
With frame: 75 x 97.5 cm
Price: 15,000 euros
“The originality stands out more and more from the work of Fernand Piet, whose types of snorers, taken from different benches in our public gardens, each have a particular hiding place. […] Fernand Piet, given his young age, promises to brilliantly catch up with his elders if he continues on this excellent path. »
Fernand Piet made himself the painter of everyday life, of Parisian life and of Brittany’s ports and villages, from Brest to Loctudy via Vannes.
This painting illustrates a market scene on the Place du Poids Public in Vannes. From the cobblestones to the front of the café des arts, the mood is for work and discussion. In the foreground, the hands are stretched out, the bodies bend down. The caps of the Bretons are hardly detailed, the touch is free and raised.
The focus is on the fruits and vegetables, the bodies, the bustle, or the picturesque character of the scene. This painting is similar to its pendant, “The Market in Brest”, dated 1899. It is historically kept in the prestigious Chtchoukine collection, named after the wealthy Moscow merchant who collected many masterpieces of modern art between 1898 and 1914.
Fernand Piet is a painter, lithographer and draftsman from the turn of the century, at the dawn of the avant-gardes. From 1890, he frequented the world of Paris during the Belle Époque, whose most significant painters were Bonnat, Cormon, Meissonier, Rochegrosse and Breton.
He is of Impressionism and Fauvism, frequents Toulouse-Lautrec, Raoul Dufy and Georges Rouault at the Atelier of the painter Eugène Cormon and Alfred Roll, known as the Académie de la Palette. He was also trained at the Beaux-Arts in Paris, at Eugène Carrière’s studio.
Subsequently, he acquired fame and recognition. The painter had his studio at 38, boulevard Rochechouart, exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Français and the Salon des Indépendants (from 1893 to 1925), of which he was vice-president in 1905 with his friend Paul Signac. The painter made history: he participated in the Viennese Secession exhibition in 1899, he was bronze medalist at the Universal Exhibition in Paris, 1900.
Bibliography :
• Erich Steingraber, Fernand Piet , Leben & Werk, Munich, Bruckman, 1974
• Armand Dayot, Art and Artists, Volume II, October 1905 – March 1906 , Paris, 1906, page 60.
The review specifies that the State bought “La Gavotte, in Loctudy, Brittany” in 1905.
• Pepin d’Ars, art. “Graphic tablets, Le Salon d’Été”, Le Nouvel Écho , literary and dramatic review, Paris, n°14, July 15, 1892, page 444-445.
Museums :
• Center National des Arts Plastiques, Paris ( La Gavotte, Brittany , 1905; The river at Pont-Château , 1911; Vegetable Market , 1906); The Pool, Roubaix; Strasbourg Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art ( Market in Zeeland , 1897); Reims museum ( Market in Liège , 1895)
• Neue Pinakothek, Munich; Hermitage Museum (Schchukin Collection), Moscow
