La belle Angèle

La belle Angèle (1889) at the Musée d'Orsay is Gauguin's most formally inventive portrait from his Breton period — a composition that placed the subject, Marie-Angélique Satre of Pont-Aven, within a circular frame within the picture, as if she were an artifact displayed in a case. Her conventional bourgeois appearance — the Breton coiffe, the fashionable dress, the dignified expression — is placed in ironic juxtaposition with a Peruvian ceramic idol in the foreground, creating a dialogue between the local culture of Brittany and the ancient Peruvian culture Gauguin had encountered in childhood in Lima. Marie-Angélique reportedly disliked the portrait, finding it ugly — a reaction that amused Gauguin, who saw it as confirmation that he was achieving something genuinely new. The Orsay's possession of this painting alongside other major Gauguins from different phases of his career makes it the single most important French museum for tracing his development.

Gauguin divides the canvas into two zones: the frontal, formally dressed figure on one side and a still-life element on the other. The face is painted with smooth, simplified planes and the costume with areas of flat local color, the whole framed by a bold painted oval that reinforces the composition's decorative, non-illusionistic character.