Four Breton Women

Four Breton Women, painted in 1886 and now in Munich's Neue Pinakothek, depicts peasant women in traditional Breton costume in a landscape — one of Gauguin's earliest Brittany canvases that would become foundational to his Post-Impressionist development. The four figures in dark dresses and white caps create a pattern of dark and light against the green landscape; their arrangement more decorative than naturalistic even at this early stage. Gauguin wrote from Brittany about the 'savage and primitive' quality he found in the Breton culture and people — a romanticized primitivism that reflected his desire to escape modern Paris rather than objective ethnographic observation. The Neue Pinakothek in Munich is one of the great European collections of nineteenth-century painting.

Oil on canvas showing Gauguin's style in transition from Impressionism toward Synthetism — the figures have stronger outlines than a pure Impressionist treatment would allow, the color areas are broader and less broken, yet the brushwork retains some of the Impressionist mark-making from which he was departing.