Pont-Aven

PONT-AVEN, 14km east of Concarneau and just inland from the tip of the Aven estuary, is a small port packed with tourists and art galleries. This was where Gauguin came to paint in the 1880s, before he left for Tahiti in search of a South Seas idyll. By all accounts Gauguin was a rude and arrogant man who lorded it over the local population (who were already well used to posing in “peasant attire” for visiting artists). As a painter and printmaker, however, he produced some of his finest work in Pont-Aven, and his influence was such that the Pont-Aven School of fellow artists developed here. He spent some years working closely with these – the best known of whom was Emile Bernard – and they in turn helped to revitalize his own approach.

For all the local hype, however, the town has no permanent collection of Gauguin’s work. The Musée Municipal (daily: mid-Feb to mid-June & mid-Sept to Dec l0am -12.30pm & 2-6pm; mid-June to mid-Sept l0am-7pm; 27F/€4.12) in the Mairie holds changing exhibitions of the numerous members of the school, and other artists active in Brittany during the same period, but you can’t count on paintings by the man himself. You will however find an interesting account of the many Irish painters who were inspired by and worked in the town