Fundraising for the future Musée Sérusier

17/3/25 - Châteauneuf-du-Faou - Musée Sérusier - 17/3/25 - Châteauneuf-du-Faou - Sérusier Museum - A new museum will open its doors on 21 June in the heart of Finistère, in the small town of Châteauneuf-du-Faou. It will showcase the Nabi ‘"with a shining beard", Paul Sérusier, and his wife, Marguerite Sérusier, née Gabriel-Claude.
The painter first stayed in Pont-Aven in 1888, where his meeting with Paul Gauguin and Émile Bernard was decisive. From 1891, he travelled throughout Brittany, stopping first in Huelgoat and then in Châteauneuf-du-Faou in 1893. Seduced by the place, Sérusier returned there regularly and ended up having a house built there in 1906. After their marriage in 1912, Marguerite joined him in Châteauneuf-du-Faou. Both then translated the hilly, wooded landscapes of the region, but also the daily life of Breton peasants, harvests and the feast of the pardon; both also created ephemeral decorations for the streets of the town or the theatre of the patronage. Still visible today, you can also admire the murals - The Annunciation, The Crucifixion, The Resurrection - that Paul created for the baptistery of the church of Saint-Julien between 1914 and 1918, and which were restored in 2020. Marguerite, who was commissioned to create a decoration for the sideboard of the station in the town of Carhaix in 1933, depicted The Pardon of Notre-Dame-des Portes in Châteauneuf-du-Faou on a large canvas divided into three parts, preserved in the collections of the future museum. An unsung artist, she trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and at the Académie Ranson, where she met Paul Sérusier, who was her teacher. She in turn taught, notably in Paul Poiret’s Martine workshops, which included a school of decorative arts. The town of Châteauneuf-du-Faou exhibited around thirty of her works in 2016, while Pont-Aven recently honoured her in the exhibition on "Women among the Nabis" (see [article-11914]).

1. Paul Sérusier (1864-1927)