The market in the Public Weight Square of Vannes , 1903

Oil on cardboard, signed and dated in the lower right corner.
Dimensions: with frame 75 x 97.5 cm
 
 

Fernand Piet paints the daily life of Parisian life and that of the Breton village countryside, from Brest to Loctudy via Vannes. This table illustrates a market scene on the Public Weight Square in Vannes. From the cobblestones to the front of the café des arts, the mood is at work and exchange. In the foreground, the hands are stretched out, the bodies are lowered. The Breton hats are barely indicated, the key is free and raised. The viewer appreciates the fruits, vegetables, the bustle, and the quintessential picturesque scene. This painting is to be compared to its counterpart, “Le Marché à Brest”, 1899, historically preserved by the prestigious Shchoukine collection.
 

 
Fernand Piet is a painter, lithographer and draftsman of the turn of the century, at the dawn of the avant-garde. From 1890, he frequented the world of Belle Époque Paris, whose most significant painters were Bonnat, Cormon, Meissonier, Rochegrosse and Breton. He is from 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 de Paris, at the studio of Eugène Carrière.
 
Subsequently, he acquired fame and recognition. The painter held 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 exhibition of the Viennese Secession in 1899, he was a Bronze medalist at the Universal Exhibition in Paris, 1900.