Vision after the Sermon (1888)
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh
Breton women see Jacob wrestling the angel on a flat red field; a Synthetist landmark
Image: Paul Gauguin · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Art
Paul Gauguin
1848–1903 · French
Post-Impressionism / Synthetism
A former stockbroker who became a full-time painter, Gauguin rejected naturalism for flat areas of bold, symbolic colour. After working in Brittany and briefly with Van Gogh in Arles, he left for Tahiti and later the Marquesas, whose people he painted.
How to spot them
- ▸Flat planes of unnatural colour with dark outlines (Cloisonnism/Synthetism)
- ▸Tahitian women in bright pareos against lush, stylised landscapes
- ▸Breton women in white coifs, sometimes seeing religious visions
- ▸Quiz clues: Pont-Aven, Tahiti, the Marquesas, stockbroker, The Moon and Sixpence
Key works
The Yellow Christ (1889)
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo, New York
Yellow crucified Christ in a Breton autumn landscape near Pont-Aven
Image: Paul Gauguin · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
When Will You Marry? (1892)
Private collection (sold to Qatar in 2015)
Two Tahitian women; reportedly sold for close to $210 million
Image: Paul Gauguin · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Nevermore (1897)
Courtauld Gallery, London
Reclining Tahitian nude, a raven on the sill; title from Edgar Allan Poe's poem
Image: Paul Gauguin · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (1897–1898)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Vast philosophical frieze of life from birth to death, read right to left
Image: Paul Gauguin · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Two Tahitian Women (1899)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Two bare-breasted women, one holding mango blossoms
Image: Paul Gauguin · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Quick-fire facts
- •Worked as a stockbroker in Paris until the 1882 stock market crash
- •Spent part of his childhood in Lima, Peru; his grandmother was the activist Flora Tristan
- •Lived with Van Gogh in the Yellow House in Arles for about nine weeks in late 1888
- •Led the Pont-Aven School of painters in Brittany
- •First sailed for Tahiti in 1891; wrote the Tahitian memoir Noa Noa
- •Died in 1903 at Atuona on Hiva Oa in the Marquesas Islands
- •W. Somerset Maugham's novel The Moon and Sixpence was inspired by his life
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Sources
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Paul Gauguin
- The National Gallery, London — Paul Gauguin