"Fernand PIET (Paris, 1869 - Paris, 1942) - "Vannes - The market place" 1903."
"The market of the place of the Public Weight of Vannes", dated 1903
Oil on cardboard, signed and dated at the bottom right..
Dimensions: 52 x 75 cm, with frame 75 x 97.5 cm
This painting should be compared to its counterpart, "The Market in Brest", 1899, historically preserved by the prestigious Shchukin Collection.
Fernand Piet paints the daily life of Parisian life and that of the Breton village countryside, from Brest to Loctudy via Vannes.
This painting illustrates a market scene on the Place du Poisson Public in Vannes. From the cobblestones to the front of the Café des arts, the mood is for work and exchange. In the foreground, the hands stretch out, the bodies stoop. The Breton women's headdresses are barely marked, the key is free and raised. The spectator appreciates the fruits, the vegetables, the hustle and bustle, and the picturesque scene par excellence.
Fernand Piet is a painter, lithographer and draftsman of the turn of the century, at the dawn of the avant-gardes. From 1890, he frequented the world of Belle Époque Paris, 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 Workshop of the painter Eugène Cormon and Alfred Roll, called Academy of the Palette.Il is also trained at the Beaux-Arts in Paris, at the workshop of Eugène Carrière.
Subsequently, he acquires fame and recognition. The painter maintains his studio at 38, boulevard Rochechouart, exhibits at the Salon des Artistes Français and the Salon des Indépendants (from 1893 to 1925), of which he is vice-president in 1905 with his friend Paul Signac. The painter makes history: he participates in the exhibition of the Viennese Secession in 1899, he is a Bronze medalist at the universal exhibition of Paris, 1900.
Bibliography :
. Erich Steïngraber, Fernand Piet, Leben & Werk, Munich, Bruckman, 1974
. Armand Dayot, Art and Artists, Volume II, October 1905-March 1906, Paris, 1906
Museums: In France, the Rennes Museum of Fine Arts. Neue Pinakothek in Munich, Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Shchukin collection