The White River

Gauguin's White River of 1888 depicts the Aven at one of its most characteristic stretches — the shallow, fast-moving water over granite boulders that produced the rushing sound and white foam that gave both the river and the town of Pont-Aven their names. The subject had a particular resonance for Gauguin's formal ambitions: the moving water's visual complexity, with its constantly changing surface of white foam, blue-grey deep water, and reflected sky, offered a test of his Synthetist method's ability to convey complex natural phenomena through simplified form and expressive color. His river subjects from this period show how Cloisonnism — a method developed partly from the simplifications of medieval stained glass and Japanese prints — could be applied to the most dynamic and difficult natural subjects without losing either formal clarity or emotional resonance. The Museum of Grenoble, which holds this canvas, assembled an important French painting collection that gave the regions of France access to contemporary Parisian work in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Gauguin renders the river's white water through his characteristic approach: bold outlines defining the rocks, the white water between them treated with simplified color areas that convey foam and movement without Impressionist optical dissolution. His palette for the Aven subjects typically emphasizes the grey of Breton granite against the blue-white of the shallow river, with the surrounding vegetation in the bold greens of his mature Synthetist work.