Breton Women at the Turn

Paul Gauguin's 'Breton Women at the Turn' (1888) is one of his most important Synthetist figure compositions from the decisive 1888 Pont-Aven period — women of the Breton community depicted at the turn in a road, their relationship to each other and to the landscape organized through his fully developed Cloisonnist vocabulary. The 'turn' in the subject title refers not just to a road's bend but to the characteristic compositional device of figures at a corner or junction, the spatial dynamics of turning creating a more complex spatial situation than the simple frontal or lateral arrangement.

Gauguin renders the Breton women with his mature Cloisonnist method — the figures bounded by bold dark outlines, the costumes (particularly the distinctive Breton women's white caps) simplified into areas of flat color, and the road and landscape setting organized through his characteristic formal vocabulary. His treatment of the Breton costumes (with their specific regional character) within the Cloisonnist framework creates the synthesis of documentary observation and formal experimentation that distinguished his best 1888 work.