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After studying under Cabanel and working in Paris, Hovenden felt prepared to meet the highest artistic standards and, having reached his middle thirties, some urgency to pursue his career as a professional. In the summer of 1875, he went to the Brittany farming village of PontAven , joining the colony of artists (fig. 23) there led by the American painter RobertWylie (1839–77), whose influence was vital for Hovenden in forging a mature style and thematic focus. Hovenden discovered he could live simply, explore new subjects, find willing models to sketch and paint, and enjoy the fellowship of other artists; as the artist told an interviewer, he found “good criticism combined with quiet, and cheap living.”1 Except for a half-year’s sojourn in Paris in 1878–79 and trips to the Salon, Hovenden would stay in Pont-Aven for his remaining years abroad. His genre and history paintings of its inhabitants were exhibited in Paris and the United States, where they attracted much critical attention and firmly established the artist’s reputation both at home and abroad. In going to Pont-Aven, Hovenden was following established practice among early nineteenth-century artists in Europe and America who spent the summer months living in the country and sketching outdoors; he was one of a number of Americans who left Paris at the close of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the ateliers and went to Brittany in 1875.As the American painter J.AldenWeir (1852–1919) wrote home in June,“everybody is going down there to paint Breton subjects this year.”2 An excellent location for artists, the village offered a temperate climate that allowed outdoor work for a number of months and the legendary gray skies of Brittany, which made forms and colors clearer and sharper.Accommodations were notably cheap and villagers willingly served as models. Hovenden’s few remaining scenic views of PontAven , one a painting of old thatch-roofed, wattle-and-daub peasant cottages, and another of the “deeply rooted,” stubbornly surviving ancient “oaks of Finistère,” demonstrate the picturesque characteristics of the region and the appeal of its apparent permanence and continuity.3 Hovenden might have heard about PontChapter  From “Picturesque” Brittany to Paris Painting Courage and Romance in History and Legend In PontAven,there was a colony of some ten or twelveAmericans and Englishmen,bent principally on the study of art,and the atmosphere was contagious. —“Francis Coates Jones,DeWitt McClellan Lockman Papers” Aven fromWeir or from other Americans in Paris such as Edgar M.Ward (1839–1915) or the Philadelphia painter Milne Ramsey (1846–1915).4 Although French artists had discovered Pont-Aven,Americans were among the earliest of many painters who spent time there from the 1860s through the 1880s.5 Other American artists who were at Pont-Aven when Hovenden arrived, besidesWylie and Ramsey, included Vermont-bornWilliam Lamb Picknell (1853–97), who became a lifelong friend of Hovenden’s and, probably, Helen Corson (1846–1935) from near Philadelphia, who would later become Hovenden’s wife.6 The next summer, Hovenden’s old Baltimore friend H. Bolton Jones and his younger brother Frank (Francis Coates) Jones joined Hovenden at PontAven .7 Frank recalled those memorable days for an interviewer: In the picturesque country of Brittany . . . [at] Pont-Aven there was a colony of some ten or twelve Americans and Englishmen, bent principally on the study of art, and the atmosphere was contagious. . . .With the exception of the horror of Wiley’s [sic] death, Jone’s [sic] memories of PontAven are of the happiest, the four-mile walk to the sea along lovely old roads, bordered by ancient oaks . . . trimmed every ten years and every twig used by the thrifty peasants for firewood, the softness of summer rain on their faces, the talks till bedtime around the fire, of home and art and far countries. In the winter, although there was no coal, the brothers had their own little stove, while the cook prepared the meals even to game and salmon for his 20 guests on five separate little fires.8  CHAPTER  23. Artists in Front of Gloanec Pension, ca. 1876–80. Private collection. FROM “PICTURESQUE” BRITTANY TO PARIS  Through the 1870s, the village was a twoday rail trip from Paris to the railroad station at Quimperle, where a postman’s cart took passengers the last dozen miles to Pont-Aven.To Hovenden ’s eyes after most of a year’s stay in the French capital, the “pretty little village” located in a...

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