The woman with the hair knots

Gauguin's 'Woman with Hair Knots' (1886) belongs to his early Pont-Aven figure subjects — the Breton women's traditional hair arrangements, with their distinctive coiffures, providing subjects that connected to his interest in non-Parisian, pre-modern cultural forms. The hair knot as subject was both a formal interest (the geometric, organized form of dressed hair creating a sculptural element within the portrait) and a cultural observation — traditional Breton dress and hair marked the distance from Parisian fashion that Gauguin found so appealing.

Gauguin renders the woman with his characteristic transitional technique of the mid-1880s — not yet fully Synthetist but already moving beyond Impressionist optical analysis toward a bolder, more simplified treatment of form. The hair knot creates a strong geometric element within the portrait's composition, the carefully dressed hair asserting its formal presence against the face. His palette shows his growing preference for richer, warmer tones than Impressionist convention permitted.