Au bord d'Eure en printemps

Au bord d'Eure en printemps (On the Banks of the Eure in Spring) by Gustave Loiseau, dated around 1900, places this Post-Impressionist painter on the banks of the Eure river in Normandy — a landscape intimately associated with the French Impressionist tradition and with Monet in particular. Loiseau, who was one of the Pont-Aven School's more Impressionist-oriented members, returned repeatedly to the rivers of Normandy and Brittany for his landscape subjects. Spring on a Norman river offered him the seasonal freshness of new foliage reflected in moving water — exactly the luminous, transient subjects he found most congenial.

Loiseau uses a broken, Neo-Impressionist-influenced brushwork to capture the river's reflective surface and the spring foliage's delicate greens and yellows. His technique is lighter and more vibrant than strict Impressionism, the colour touches more systematically separated to maximize their optical interaction.