Vision After the Sermon

The Vision After the Sermon (Jacob Wrestling with the Angel), painted in Brittany in 1888, announced Gauguin's radical Synthetist style. The vivid red ground — an impossible, symbolic color — separates a congregation of Breton women from the biblical vision they experience after mass. Bold outlines enclose flat color planes in a manner derived from Japanese prints and medieval stained glass. The work marked a decisive break from Impressionist naturalism toward expressive symbolism His synthesis of Western Post-Impressionism with non-Western visual traditions opened pathways that Fauvism, Expressionism, and beyond would follow.

Gauguin applied paint in broad, flat planes of non-naturalistic color bounded by dark contour lines — a style he called Synthetism. His palette is saturated and expressive: deep carmines, cadmium yellows, tropical greens, and acid blue-purples.