"I love Brittany. I find my own wildness and primitiveness there.” (Gauguin qtd in Silverman, 93)
As an artist escaping in search of “primitivism,” Gauguin was not the first to find Pont-Aven, Brittany. According to historian Caroline Boyle-Turner, the small French village had been drawing in artists since the early 1860’s. (Boyle-Turner, 1) Artists were attracted to the region because of its strong local culture and religious fervor. The village, located on the Aven river, was populated by a group who, as Boyle-Turner puts it, maintained qualities of “a cultural past that was governed less by French culture then by a fascinating amalgam of Celtic, Druidic and medieval Christian folklore.” (Boyle-Turner, 1) This blend of ancient elements created an environment where artists believed they could encounter a more “primitive” and “true” people. Yet, as Gill Perry points out, this “primitivism,” while still in existence, had diminished by the 1880’s, the peak of Pont-Aven’s popularity among artists and the period when Gauguin was working there. Technical advances in farming as well as the continuing increase in revenue from tourism had helped to move Brittany forward into the modern world and away from the timelessness artists had come looking for. (Perry, 10) Thus, Perry asserts that artists working in Brittany were more specifically recreating ideas of the “primitive” they were in search of rather than representing the true Breton culture around them. (Perry, 12)
Despite this conflict, artists continued to flock to the area from around the world. Besides a large number of French painters, including Pascal Dagan-Bouveret, Emile Bernard and Paul Gauguin, a substantial number of artists came from both England and North America, including an early settler, American Robert Wylie. (Boyle-Turner,1) Although most of these artists, with the notable exceptions of Bernard and Gauguin, painted in a more traditional, academic tradition, they all shared similar subject matter, focusing on pastoral, religious and cultural scenes and largely ignoring the industry growing up around them.
"Ragpicker and Pottery Seller," Robert Wylie (c.1875), “Study for Breton Women at a Pardon,” Dagnan-Bouveret (1887), "Breton Women at a Pardon," Emile Bernard (1888)