Gauguin in Brittany

Color's of the Mind's Eye: Brittany and Gauguin's Path to Symbolism

Nina Cronan, Princeton Class of 2008

The still, unnatural, sickly yellow face of crucified Christ immediately confronts the viewer. What is even more shocking than this gaunt figure is his location among a group of blank, expressionless women in an unfamiliar, surreal orange and yellow landscape. All of these evocative, dreamlike elements combine to categorize Gauguin’s “Yellow-Christ”(1889) as a classic Symbolist work. Symbolism, a strand of Postimpressionism, is defined by the Grove Dictionary of Art as an artistic movement that, “stresses feeling and evocation over definition and fact and emphasizes the power of suggestion.” (Kaplan) Thus, the mixture of the reality of the Breton landscape and women with the image of crucified Christ in Gauguin’s work gives it the sense of meaning and suggestion intended by Symbolists. As Debora Silverman points out in her book Van Gogh and Gauguin, The Search for Sacred Art, the Symbolism in “Yellow Christ” has been tied to and equated with its obvious religious subject matter. (Silverman, 278) As Gauguin moved further into Symbolist painting, he continued to included a great deal of Christian imagery in his pieces, tying this religious subject matter intrinsically to his success as a Symbolist. By painting religious subjects mixed with the natural world, Gauguin was able to connect images of the mind and of the soul with observed imagery, thus infusing his paintings with Symbolic significance.

Yet while it is true that Christian subject matter was a very prominent element of Gauguin’s Symbolism, this imagery alone did not lead him to the Symbolism for which he is famous. From 1886 to 1888 Gauguin took numerous trips to Pont-Aven, Brittany, and during his time there developed as an artist, moving away from the tradition of Impressionism and embarking on the new style of Symbolism. Over this time Gauguin did integrate more and more obvious religious images into his work, however, parallel to this progression it is crucial to note that Gauguin also developed his use of color. As Gauguin continued to search for a kind of “primitivism” and truth he moved farther away from the natural world and deeper into his sub conscious, abandoning the natural tones of Impressionism for the colors of his mind’s eye -- solid, bold and chalked full of meaning. The steady development of his use of color was necessary in allowing Gauguin’s breakthrough into Symbolism to occur because, unlike his religious imagery, it shows that he had begun to see the world in new way, no longer dependent on optical reality but on his own interpretation. It is important to realize the pivotal role color played in Gauguin’s move to Symbolism because it reveals that it was not only what Gauguin saw that made him into a Symbolist, but, more importantly, how he saw it.

Historical Context

Gauguin's 1886 Breton Paintings

Gauguin's Early 1888 Works

Vision After the Sermon

Conclusion

Work Cited

About the Author