During his first trip to Brittany in 1886, and the first step of his journey to Symbolism, Gauguin was still producing works that retained an evident Impressionist palette. (Boyle-Turner) For example, “Breton Shepherdess” (1886) shares the true colors of Impressionism, while also revealing the beginnings of Gauguin’s introduction of religious subject matter, focusing on a shepherdess and her flock, a clear Christian image. The work is made up of soft, natural greens, yellows, oranges and blues applied in quick brushstrokes and carefully modulated across the canvas. This use of the true tones is closely tied to Gauguin’s origins as an Impressionist and the influence Pissaro had on his work. (Wildenstein, 291) As stated by Daniel Wildenstein in his analysis of Gauguin’s “Breton Shepherdess,” “The atmosphere of this works remains Impressionist.” (Wildenstein, 291) Thus, as Wildenstein notes, not only the colors of the piece relied on the past, but also, despite its subtle Christian imagery, the “atmosphere” and essence of the work relied on the fleeting purpose of Impressionist paintings.
In “Four Breton Women” (1886), however, Gauguin begins to transition away from Impressionistic tones seen in “Breton Shepherdess” and towards a more individual use of color that harkens to his later Symbolism. This work, painted in 1886 back in France, but based on a number of sketches done near the end of his first stay in Brittany, is similar to his earlier 1886 works in its general palette and application of color. (Mathews, 75) Gauguin continues to use very naturalistic colors and to divide his tones in an Impressionist manner. In Technique and Meaning in the Paintings of Paul Gauguin, Vojtech Jirat-Wasiutynski states that Gauguin’s colors in this painting are, “very close to Pissaro’s impressionist palette,” (Jirat-Wasiutynski, 76) and therefore are clearly similar to those of earlier 1886 pieces that also reflected Pissaro’s influence. This influence, however, is not continuous throughout the painting. In the work, Gauguin begins to incorporate larger fields of flat color, most notable in the vermillion skirt of the woman on the left and the stark white headdresses and collars of all four women. These colors take on a more powerful role than the soft, natural tones of the earlier works, the stark white perhaps suggesting the purity of the women and the red skirt possibility capturing their more primitive, internal emotions. As Yann Le Pinchon points out, this shift in the use of color in “Four Breton Women” shows its clear movement towards Symbolism. (Le Pinchon, 46) Likewise, Jirat-Wasiutynski reinforces the development of the painting, saying, “ ‘Four Breton Women’ has often been signaled out as evidence of a turning point in the artist’s work, as he moved away from Impressionism and towards the developments of 1888, variously labeled Cloisonism, Synthetism or Symbolism.” (Jirat-Wasiutynski, 68) While these sources clearly highlight a turning point in Gauguin’s style, they do not go far enough in emphasizing how pivotal a role his use of color played in this shift. While his use of “unconventional drawing,” stressed by art historians such as Matthews, was important is capturing the new message of Gauguin’s work (Mathews, 75), his unconventional color took more drastic steps to pull the work away from actuality and towards an inner truth about the power of the primitive, individual mind he was struggling to capture.