Brume sur la rivière à Pont-Aven

Brume sur la rivière à Pont-Aven (Mist on the River at Pont-Aven) by Henry Moret from 1901, held in the Museum of Fine Arts of Reims, depicts the Aven river at Pont-Aven — the Breton town that gave its name to the artist colony formed around Gauguin in the late 1880s. Moret had been among the most loyal of Gauguin's Pont-Aven followers and continued to paint the town and its river long after the colony had dispersed. Morning mist on the Aven river, lifting from the water's surface to reveal the surrounding wooded banks, was a subject that combined the atmospheric with the specifically local. This painting preserves the look of Pont-Aven's river landscape as it appeared to the Post-Impressionist generation that made the town famous.

Moret renders the morning mist with a softened palette and looser handling than his clear-weather coastal paintings, using diffused values and blended transitions to convey the way mist dissolves the distinction between water, bank, and sky. The Post-Impressionist color nevertheless maintains a heightened quality even in the muted conditions.