The Boss's Daughter

Gauguin's 'Boss's Daughter' (1886) belongs to his Pont-Aven period subjects — the human figures of the Breton rural community depicted with his characteristic combination of direct observation and emerging formal ambition. The title implies a social observation — the daughter of a local inn-keeper or business owner, a figure who occupied a specific social position within the small rural community. Gauguin's Breton figure subjects were not idealized peasants but observed individuals with specific social identities within the community he was embedded in.

Gauguin's 1886 figure subject shows his approach in transition — the handling still broadly naturalistic but already moving toward the simplified forms and bolder color relationships that would define his Synthetist period. The figure is rendered with the direct, unsentimentalized observation that was characteristic of his human subjects. His palette, warmer and more saturated than Impressionist convention, is already asserting itself.