(The painting above, "La Belle Angele" was painted by Gauguin as a thank-you to a Pont-Aven innkeeper and his wife who extended him credit at their cafe.  The couple didn't like it -- they thought the portrait didn't look like Angele, and suspected that the little clay figure to the left was a caricature of her husband, so they rejected the gift.   But I find the image haunting.)

Third installment in a series of photo essays about Pont-Aven, a small village in Brittany, France. 

“What this supposed to be?” my husband asks.  Although my husband and his brother are immersed in their conversation about the economy, a shift in the light must have captured their attention as my sister-in-law leads our little group into le Bois d’Amour.

“The Forest of Love,” says Jane.

“It’s where Gauguin and the other artists--”

“Cavorted,” Ken completes the thought.  We all laugh.

Well, yes, as the name “The Forest of Love” implies, it was in these shady woods that the Pont-Aven artists shared picnics, and shed their inhibitions, about their bodies and about their art.  They also shared painting lessons, and esthetic and philosophical discussions.

We cross the foot bridge into the forest.

As our husbands fall back into their avid discussion, my sister-in-law and I use our stumbling French to decipher the signs that mark the self-guided walking tour through the woods, recounting the story of the artists, their art and their "cavorting."

We've come to Pont-Aven, Bretagne, renting a house belonging to an acquaintance, for a vacation.  It is a wonderful surprise to find that this quiet little town has played a role in art history out of proportion to its tiny size.

By the late 1880s a group of artists had gathered in the little Breton village of Pont-Aven.  A tight circle gathered around a charismatic and difficult man, a former stockbroker who would become one of the founders (with artists like Paul Cezanne, Georges Seurat and Vincent Van Gogh) of modern art -- Paul Gauguin.

Gauguin came to Pont-Aven for many reasons.  He wanted to paint the picturesque landscape and the women in their Breton costumes -- and he'd heard it was cheap!

The rainy Breton weather and the Aven River nourish the Forest of Love even now.  Following the walking tour, we learn the history.

Here, in 1888, Gauguin gave a famous art lesson, now called “The Lesson of the Bois d’Amour.”

“That tree, how does it look to you?” Gauguin is said to have asked, then answered his own question. “It’s green, isn’t it?  Paint it green, then, the finest green on your palette.  And this shadow, rather blue?  Don’t be afraid to paint it as blue as possible.”

"As blue as possible."  For Gauguin, art was about intensity.

The lesson of the Bois d’Amour produced this seminal painting by Paul Serusier, “The Talisman.”

(Le Talisman by Paul Serusier.) 

This painting is considered the first "Nabi" painting.  The Nabis were a group of artists who sought to revitalize art, influenced both by the Impressionists and art nouveau as well as Japanese prints. 

And Serusier certainly took Gauguin's advice to heart -- Could the yellow be more yellow, the red more red?

This painting by Emile Bernard depicts a woman asleep in the Forest of Love.  The main steet in Post-Aven is now called Rue de Emile Bernard.

As I walk, I examine at the woods in which these paintings were set, the trees under whose shade Gauguin gave his famous lesson.  It is cool, green and shady here -- but not especially remarkable.  The rain keeps these Breton woods lush, but the colors are not more brilliant than in other woods I've tramped through. 

Emerging from the le Bois d'Amour, I think to myself, maybe new ways of looking at things don't have to come from remarkable places -- Maybe it was the combination of the people and the place that shaped the ideas born here.

Maybe it isn't the place but our eyes, the intensity of the artist's gaze, that turns a forest into a landscape, or turns a plain Breton woman into a portrait of La Belle Angele.

 Next installment: The Real Model for Gauguin's "Yellow Christ"