A sandy track winds through a gently undulating landscape, leading the viewer’s eye towards the church tower of the small village of Bussy-Saint-Georges. Four slender trees rise to the right of the road. Léo Gausson (1860–1944) painted this tranquil scene a stone’s throw from his birthplace, Lagny-sur-Marne, east of Paris. The rural surroundings of Lagny remained a lasting source of inspiration for him. Gausson enjoyed taking long walks through the hilly landscape, which he depicted frequently in paintings and drawings. The art critic Félix Fénéon (1861–1944) described him as ‘a naïve and attentive wanderer, concerned with expressing himself in a sincere manner’.
The road to becoming an artist
After the death of his father in 1874, the fourteen-year-old Gausson moved to Paris. There he took classes in drawing and sculpture with Justin-Marie Lequien (1796–1881) at the Ecole municipale de dessin du Xe arrondissement, where Georges Seurat (1859–1891) was also a student. In addition, Gausson learned the art of engraving in the atelier of Théophile Chauvel (1831–1909). From the age of sixteen until twenty-six he worked at the printing house of Eugène Froment (1844–1926), a family friend. He produced posters and illustrated plates for various journals, including Le Monde illustré, L’Artiste and L’Illustration. It was in Froment’s workshop that Gausson met Maximilien Luce (1858–1941) and Emile-Gustave Cavallo-Péduzzi (1851–1917), developing a close friendship with both of them. Together they shared an interest in painting, devoting themselves wholeheartedly to it after leaving the printing trade. Gausson introduced Luce and Cavallo-Péduzzi to the area around Lagny, which became an important place of work for them. In 1887 Lucien Pissarro (1863–1944) joined this circle of friends, later known as the Groupe de Lagny. Lucien’s father, Camille Pissarro (1830–1903), also frequently visited the village of Lagny and maintained regular contact with the budding young artists. By that time already an established painter, the elder Pissarro supported Luce and Gausson by introducing them to dealers and collectors.
Gausson maintained a particularly strong bond with Luce: they painted together outdoors and exchanged ideas in numerous letters. On 3 June 1886, for example, Gausson wrote to Luce: ‘From the point of view of colour, when one does not wish to work like everyone else, one must try to be stronger than everyone else, otherwise one risks being much worse. One must be either very well grounded or very naïve (being both is better still), and fully respect one’s temperament as well as one’s eye, whatever they may show us.’ This passage is infused with the ideas of Emile Zola (1840–1902), who in 1866 articulated his view of art as follows: ‘A work of art is a corner of creation seen through a temperament.’ Luce and Gausson were deeply engaged with Zola’s ideas and discussed in detail the influence of his novel L’Œuvre.
Gausson was so deeply impressed by Zola and his ideas that in 1885 he wrote him a long letter describing his search for a personal working method: ‘The scraps of craft, tricks, and procedures learned here and there having failed to satisfy me, I have had to create, almost entirely on my own, in the face of nature, a method of working – of observation, at the very least.’ Gausson explicitly described himself as self-taught in painting. The wide range of art that he encountered during his employment at Froment’s atelier, together with his many visits to the Louvre, shaped his understanding of art history. He was especially drawn to the work of Claude Lorrain, Hans Holbein the Younger, Gerard Dou, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes and Jean-François Millet. Zola approved of Gausson’s autodidactic approach, writing: ‘I have more confidence in direct observation than in theory.’ He also encouraged him emphatically: ‘rage on, work, have genius enough to force my admiration.’
In the years that followed, Gausson experimented extensively. He regularly shifted between styles and drew inspiration from a wide range of artistic movements. In his 1970 publication, Jean Sutter therefore characterised him as a ‘commercial traveller in avant-garde painting.’ Gausson’s friend Edouard Cortés described him as ‘[…] very versatile in his manner. Sensitive to every new attempt, he painted in every possible way: one day “Impressionist” and “Neo-Impressionist,” the next “Pont-Aven,” then “Nabi,” “Synthetist,” “Symbolist” and “Rosicrucian.” All of this simultaneously, as it were.’ Although Gausson occupies only a minor role in the art historical canon, he is remembered above all for his pointillist work. In fact, he worked in the pointillist, or neo-impressionist, style only briefly, from 1886 until around 1890.
The Groupe de Lagny and neo-impressionism
Like many contemporaries, both within and beyond France, Gausson, Luce and Cavallo-Péduzzi were captivated by Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte – 1884 when it was shown at the eighth and final Impressionist Exhibition in 1886. Echoing the interests of Seurat and many others, Gausson engaged with the colour theories of the French chemist Eugène Chevreul, who in 1839 published his influential De la loi du contraste simultané des couleurs. In his letter to Zola, Gausson wrote of ‘a method of colouring that I have based on the work of the scientist Chevreul’. Inspired by Seurat’s application of this theory, Gausson, Luce and Cavallo-Péduzzi began to experiment with the pointillist, or divisionist, technique. Lucien Pissarro, who had been introduced to neo-impressionism at an early age by his father Camille, further stimulated enthusiasm for this method among the three artists.
The friends in the Groupe de Lagny each developed their own variation on the style, while continually influencing one another through close collaboration. Luce, for example, worked mainly with a brisk, confident pointillist touch across the entire canvas. In his pronounced palette he often chose bright colours and strong contrasts, clearly visible in Lagny, the Iron Bridge over the Marne . Cavallo-Péduzzi, by contrast, adopted a more atmospheric manner. He generally favoured more subdued colours and allowed his dots to flow softly into one another. This lent his paintings a gentle appearance, as can be seen in The Washerwomen . Lucien Pissarro remained most aligned with Seurat’s more methodical approach; he typically combined a small, precise pointillist touch with a muted colour palette, as in The Church of Eragny .
Lucien Pissarro, The Church of Eragny, 1886, oil on canvas, 53.2 × 72.2 cm, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Photo: © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford
Like his friends Luce and Cavallo-Péduzzi, Gausson developed his own interpretation of Seurat’s Neo-Impressionist technique. Whereas Seurat applied his dots in a calculated manner – small, regular and arranged according to a strict grid – Gausson worked more freely and intuitively. He greatly varied both the size of the dots and the distance between them. An example of Gausson’s looser application of pointillism is Landscape near Lagny, the Church of Conches . In this painting he used a coarser touch, layering dots over one another in a manner reminiscent of Camille Pissarro’s approach to neo-impressionism. This is particularly evident in the textured layers of paint in the grass on the right. Although Gausson employed a wide range of hues, he used a less pronounced colour contrast here than in The Church Tower of Bussy-Saint-Georges. Landscape near Lagny however, which Gausson painted between 1887 and 1889, demonstrates a more dogmatic application of neo-impressionism. He placed neat, round dots tightly together and employed sharp colour contrasts, clearly visible for example in the lines that run through the landscape towards the horizon.
Léo Gausson, Landscape near Lagny, 1887–89, oil on canvas, 23 × 29 cm, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud, Cologne. Photo: Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln
The Church Tower of Bussy-Saint-Georges demonstrates how Gausson also varied his techniques within a single work. He may first have constructed the composition in general outlines, using broadly painted areas of uniform colour – essentially a kind of ébauche, or underpainting. He then applied unmixed pigments in small dots placed next to and over one another. For the grass, for example, he worked with a green base layer, over which he alternated daubs of orange, pale pink, ochre yellow and even blue. In the viewer’s eye, these dots appear to merge according to a mélange optique, an optical mixing of colours. By placing complementary hues next to each other, their contrasts are intensified, lending the painting a vibrant, shimmering quality. While the grass in the foreground still reveals much of the green underlayer, the hill on the left and the meadow in the centre of the composition are almost entirely covered with dots. In the sky and the road, Gausson even employed coarse, pastose brushwork, of strokes rather than dots. He also used a wide range of colours, particularly visible in the foliage. When the paint was almost dry, he added orange lines along the tree trunks and red accents in the leaves as finishing touches to the painting.
Gausson and Van Gogh
In 1888 Gausson exhibited nine paintings at the Salon des Indépendants. His work was displayed there next to three paintings by Van Gogh (1853–1890), who was exhibiting at the Salon des Indépendants for the very first time. According to Ellen Wardwell Lee, Gausson may also have submitted The Church Tower of Bussy-Saint-Georges to this exhibition, albeit under the title Église de Gouvernes (The Church of Gouvernes). This, however, cannot be verified.
Gausson greatly admired Van Gogh, whose work he eagerly viewed at Père Tanguy’s shop on the rue Clauzel in Paris. Van Gogh’s impact on Gausson’s own work is clearly visible in paintings that he produced around 1890. In a review of the 1891 Salon des Indépendants, Fénéon noted Gausson’s new orientation: ‘Here, Léo Gausson, hesitating between optical painting and a painting of flat, saturated and cloisonné tones; these blazing fires are fanned by the instinctive Symbolist and colourist that Van Gogh was.’ A work entitled The Decorative Apple Tree, which Gausson submitted to the Indépendants in 1893, was described by Jean Bernac as ‘a decorative apple tree over which Van Gogh looms.’ Although no painting under that title is known today, the remark may refer to The House with the Red Tree , which displays stylistic affinities with Van Gogh’s trees, for example those in Garden of the Asylum .
Léo Gausson, The House with the Red Tree, 1890, oil on canvas, 55 × 46 cm, private collection
The critic Robert Bernier, by contrast, noted a difference between the two artists, sensing in Gausson ‘a patient observation, an extreme analysis of things, but also a profound capacity for synthesis and evocation,’ adding that ‘this synthesis seems to us to be lacking in the works of Van Gogh.’ This is a telling reference to Gausson’s investigative approach.
In addition to drawing inspiration from Van Gogh’s work, Gausson was also keen to own one of his paintings, possibly in order to study it even more closely in the privacy of his studio or home. Owing to a lack of funds, he proposed an exchange to Theo van Gogh (1857–1891). On 5 June 1890, Theo wrote to his brother Vincent: ‘Gausson wants to do an exchange with you, anything you want of his in exchange for what you want to give him. I told him to come one day with me to see you at your place.’ Had Vincent not died shortly thereafter, this meeting would probably have taken place in the following weeks. In early August 1890, Gausson repeated his request in a letter of condolence to Theo: ‘If you do not think that my request is too indiscreet, I would be so bold as to make it again.’ The exchange ultimately did take place, and Theo received The Church Tower of Bussy-Saint-Georges. As such, the present painting may well have been one of the last additions to the brothers’ collection. Just which work by Van Gogh Gausson received in return, and what subsequently happened to it, however, remains a mystery.
Merel Rotman
April 2026