Sailing Vessel in Moonlight

Sailing Vessel in Moonlight (1878) at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek is among the earliest of Gauguin's surviving paintings, made when he was thirty years old, still employed as a sailor's trading agent in the Paris finance sector, and painting as a serious amateur. His years as a merchant marine sailor in the 1860s and early 1870s — including a circumnavigation of South America — gave him direct experience of the sea that informed this moonlit maritime subject. The nocturnal, romantically lit sailing vessel belongs to a tradition running from Caspar David Friedrich through Turner and the French Romantic marine painters, and Gauguin's engagement with it reflects both his autobiographical connection to the sea and his study of the European painting tradition through his guardian Arosa's collection. The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek's extensive Gauguin holdings — from this earliest canvas through mature Breton and Polynesian works — provide Copenhagen with one of the most comprehensive surveys of his development available outside France.

The moonlit water is rendered in horizontal strokes of dark blue and silver, with the reflected light path in pale yellow-white. The sailing vessel is silhouetted in near-black against the lighter sky and water. The restricted tonal range — unusual in Gauguin's colouristically bold work — creates an atmosphere of melancholy stillness.