It was known for economical but excellent quality food, where the diners served themselves from shared dishes set out on a long table in the dining room.

[1] Two American art students, Earl Shinn (1838–1886) and Howard Roberts (1843–1900), arrived in Paris in the spring on 1866 and applied for admission to the École des Beaux-Arts.

The villager were friendly to the artists, found them studio space in the run-down Château de Lezaven, and were glad to pose for them.

[1] The artists stayed at the Hôtel des Voyageurs or the Pension Gloanec, or else found lodgings in the villagers' houses.

[4] Arthur Hoeber (1854–1915) described him as a "prince of scoundrels and incomparable idlers, with a halo of vague and misty tales of his early life as a smuggler and wrecker on the wild coast nearby, never quite authenticated, but giving him much distinction and interest."

[4] Corwin Knapp Linson (1864–1959) said the kitchen had two great Breton beds on either side of the fireside in which the mistress and her maids slept.

He wrote that the "time honoured fireplace was framed in a blazonment of brass and copper utensils which blinked, flashed, glowed according to ever changing humour of light.

The work of the regular guests covered the walls of the kitchen and dining room, depicting the local men and women who posed for the artists.

It was the true Bohemian home in the town where lodgings and two good meals per day with cider could be had for sixty francs a month.

Dorothy described the dining room "where rough men sat on either side of a long table, serving themselves out of a common dish, and dipping great slices of bread into their plates."

[13] In early October 1888 Paul Sérusier was staying at the Pension Gloanec, where he submitted a canvas to Gauguin for criticism.

[1] Marie Jeanne Gloanec, "la mère des peintres", earned enough from her painters to build a larger hotel in the town square.

[16] The writer Alfred Jarry (1873–1907) visited Pont-Aven in June 1894 and booked into the Pension Gloanec, where he found Gauguin laid up with a broken leg caused by a fall during a fight with some fishermen in Concarneau.