Breton Girl Spinning

This Brittany painting from 1889 belongs to Gauguin's important Pont-Aven period, when he developed Synthetism — the use of simplified, outlined forms and bold non-naturalistic color — in dialogue with Émile Bernard. Gauguin abandoned a successful Parisian stockbroker career to pursue art, ultimately leaving Western civilization altogether in search of what he called 'primitive' authenticity, first in Brittany and then in Tahiti. His rejection of academic naturalism in favor of symbolic color and simplified form was foundational to Symbolism, Fauvism, and Expressionism. He saw painting as capable of conveying spiritual and emotional truths inaccessible to descriptive realism.

Gauguin applied paint in broad, flat areas of strong color bounded by firm contour lines — a technique he called Synthetism, derived partly from medieval stained glass and Japanese prints. His palette is deliberately non-naturalistic, using vivid magentas, ochres.