Vase with Nasturtiums and Quimper Faience

Vase with Nasturtiums and Quimper Faience (1886) at the National Gallery of Canada belongs to Gauguin's first major Pont-Aven visit, when he was beginning to situate himself within the specific cultural identity of Brittany as well as its landscape. The Quimper faience — distinctive blue-and-white earthenware produced in Quimper, the capital of Finistère — was a culturally specific Breton object that functioned as a marker of regional identity, and its inclusion in a still life alongside nasturtiums was a statement of the Breton setting that his flower pieces from the Paris region could not make. By incorporating locally made ceramics, Gauguin was binding his still-life practice to the broader cultural project of his Breton years — the attempt to find in Brittany's specific regional culture an authenticity that metropolitan Paris had lost. The National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa holds this canvas alongside other significant Post-Impressionist works, and its presence in a Canadian rather than European collection reflects the broad international distribution of Gauguin's minor works through the art market of the early twentieth century.

The Quimper faience vase provides a decorative, patterned element that adds cultural specificity to the composition. The nasturtiums are painted with confident colour — the vivid oranges and yellows that Gauguin was beginning to use with greater chromatic boldness. The background is relatively neutral, directing attention to the flowers and the distinctive regional ceramics of the vase.