Bathing in Front of the Port of Pont-Aven

Bathing in Front of the Port of Pont-Aven (1886) at the Dixon Gallery in Memphis belongs to Gauguin's first sustained Breton period, when he arrived in Pont-Aven for the first time and was beginning to explore the village and its surroundings as painting subjects. By 1886 Pont-Aven had already been a destination for artists from across Europe and America for two decades, and Gauguin arrived at a working artists' colony with its own social infrastructure, inns, and informal networks. The bathing subject in front of the harbor combined figure painting — always a challenge in outdoor conditions — with the specific topography of the port that had been documented by dozens of visiting painters before him. His handling at this date was still relatively Impressionist, reflecting the influence of Pissarro, and the canvas stands at the beginning of the transformation that would produce the Vision after the Sermon just two years later. The Dixon Gallery, which holds both this Gauguin and the Cézanne Arbres et rochers, is an important American repository of French Post-Impressionist landscape.

The handling is more Impressionist than Gauguin's later work — responsive, varied brushwork capturing the atmosphere of the harbor setting. Figures in the water are sketched loosely against the more carefully rendered architectural background of Pont-Aven. The palette combines warm flesh tones with the blues and greens of the water.