Cliffs at Cape Frehel 1905

Gustave Loiseau painted this landscape of the Cliffs at Cape Frehel in France with oil on canvas. The image presents us with a sweeping view of the French coastline, but we can also see that the artist was deeply engaged with the formal questions of painting. Loiseau was working in a rapidly changing art world, where the academic structures of the 19th century were gradually giving way to more independent and experimental approaches. We can still see the legacy of Impressionism in his broken brushstrokes and emphasis on capturing the fleeting effects of light and atmosphere. But, he's also pushing beyond this, toward a more simplified, almost abstracted representation of nature. To truly understand this work, we need to place it within the specific context of French art and culture at the turn of the century and research the development of modernism and the changing role of the artist in society. We then might see how the painter's turn to landscape can be read as a retreat from the social world, or perhaps an attempt to find new forms for representing it.