Paysannes bretonnes

Historical Context

Paysannes Bretonnes (Breton Peasant Women), painted in 1894 and now in the Musée d'Orsay, belongs to the body of Brittany work Gauguin produced during his French sojourn between his two Tahitian periods. After his first return from Polynesia in 1893, Gauguin spent time in Brittany revisiting the landscape and people that had first inspired his Synthetist revolution. The Breton peasant women of 1894 are painted with the full stylistic maturity he had developed: strong outlines, flat color zones, simplified forms, and the symbolic use of color that his time in Tahiti had intensified. The Musée d'Orsay holds the core collection of French Post-Impressionism, making it the primary home for understanding Gauguin's development.

Technical Analysis

Oil on canvas with Gauguin's full Synthetist vocabulary applied to a familiar Breton subject — the peasant women's costumes providing flat geometric patterns of dark and white, the landscape background reduced to bands of color, the figures' outlines firm and decorative rather than naturalistic.

Look Closer

◆The two foreground women are rendered in flat, simplified planes of colour outlined in dark contours — a Synthetist approach he developed in the first Brittany period and maintained even after Tahiti.
◆Breton coifs — the distinctive starched white headgear — are rendered as pure geometric shapes, almost abstract flat white forms against darker garments.
◆The path beneath the women's feet is a warm ochre that vibrates against the cool green of the grass beside it.
◆A wall or hedge in the middle distance creates a strong horizontal band that divides the composition between the terrestrial figures and the distant landscape.
◆The palette — ochre, dark blue-green, warm white — references the Pont-Aven palette of the first Brittany period rather than the acid Tahitian colour schemes.

See It In Person

Musée d'Orsay

Paris, France

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More by Paul Gauguin

Idyll in Tahiti

Paul Gauguin·1901

Fruits and Knife

Paul Gauguin·1901

In the Waves (Dans les Vagues)

Paul Gauguin·1889

The Offering

Paul Gauguin·1902

More from the Post-Impressionism Period

Rocks and Trees (Rochers et arbres)

Paul Cézanne·1904

Bathers (Baigneurs)

Paul Cézanne·1903

Fruit on a Table (Fruits sur la table)

Paul Cézanne·1891

Gardener (Le Jardinier)

Paul Cézanne·1885

Historical Context

Look Closer

◆The two foreground women are rendered in flat, simplified planes of colour outlined in dark contours — a Synthetist approach he developed in the first Brittany period and maintained even after Tahiti.

◆Breton coifs — the distinctive starched white headgear — are rendered as pure geometric shapes, almost abstract flat white forms against darker garments.

◆The path beneath the women's feet is a warm ochre that vibrates against the cool green of the grass beside it.

◆A wall or hedge in the middle distance creates a strong horizontal band that divides the composition between the terrestrial figures and the distant landscape.

◆The palette — ochre, dark blue-green, warm white — references the Pont-Aven palette of the first Brittany period rather than the acid Tahitian colour schemes.