The Ham

The Ham, now at The Phillips Collection in Washington, was painted in 1889 during Gauguin's stay in Brittany and represents an unusual subject in his oeuvre—a close-up of cured meat rather than the tropical fruits or Breton produce that populate his still lifes. The raw, unglamorous subject matter reflects the same anti-bourgeois impulse that drove him toward peasant life and eventually to Polynesia: a refusal to aestheticize only what convention deemed beautiful. Duncan Phillips acquired it as part of his commitment to Post-Impressionist modernism.

The ham is placed boldly against a surface of orange and pink, painted in broad, relatively smooth strokes that emphasize the dense material weight of the meat. Color temperature shifts from the warm ochres of the flesh to cool blue-violet shadows underneath, a chromatic contrast Gauguin uses to model the form without academic chiaroscuro.