Maxime Maufra  (French, 1861-1918) 

Maxime Maufra (French, 1861–1918) was a painter and printmaker loosely associated with the Pont-Aven school and best known for his marine landscapes. He was trained by the landscape painter Charles Le Roux in his hometown of Nantes in France. After visiting Britain in 1883 and seeing the work of Thomas Gainsborough, John Constable, and J.M.W. Turner, Maufra gave up his business career to become a painter. He traveled extensively throughout Normandy and Brittany, where he met Synthetist painters Paul Sérusier and Paul Gaugin at Pont-Aven in 1890. The flat planes of vivid color in Maufra’s seascape The Cliffs at Beg-ar-Fry, Saint-Jean-du-Doigt (1895) indicate the influence of Synthetism. Maufra first exhibited his work at the Paris Salon in 1886 and later with Parisian dealer Paul Durand-Ruel. Maufra’s work is currently held in the collections of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, among others.