A technically precise artist, Gustave Loiseau attracted the right individuals early in his career to make his path a success. After studying in his hometown of Paris at the School of Decorative Arts and with noted landscapist Fernand Quignone, Loiseau left for Port-Aven on the Brittany Coast. There he associated closely with Paul Gauguin, Henry Moret and Maxime Maufra, who all played important roles in his overall artistic development.
In 1895, Loiseau was exhibiting in the Salon des Independants and the Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts where he met the primary patron of the Impressionists, Paul Durand-Ruel, whom put the artist under contract in 1897. The freedom this afforded Loiseau allowed him to travel the country and paint a wide variety of French scenes, seeming to prefer the coastal villages to all others. His post-impressionists views of the River Seinne, Dieppe and Port-Aven proved quite popular in Paris.
Loiseau developed an individual take on the Pointillism technique of Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, incorporating the complementary color theories and fluid shapes of Impressionism with rigid brushwork and glowing light. He advanced the idea of what is acceptable in a landscape painting to include reaching elevated perspectives and rich, exaggerated pigments.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York holds a significant number of paintings by Gustave Loiseau, as do the collections of: Chateau Museum of Dieppe, France Ashmolean Museum of Oxford, England Albright-Know Art Gallery of Buffalo, New York State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia and a significant number of private collections.