Houses at Vaugirard

Painted in 1880 when Gauguin was still a part-time painter supplementing his stockbroker income, this view of houses at Vaugirard — a working-class neighbourhood in southern Paris — shows him working in the Impressionist tradition with growing confidence and ambition. He had been exhibiting with the Impressionists since 1879 through the sponsorship of Camille Pissarro, and was steadily building his technical skills and reputation within the group. The Israel Museum in Jerusalem holds this early work as documentation of the formative years before Gauguin's later radical transformations.

The handling is Impressionist in approach — loose, responsive brushwork recording the light on buildings and street. The palette is appropriately urban and muted, the grey-beige tones of Parisian buildings rendered with varied atmospheric strokes. The composition has a quiet, documentary quality that reflects Gauguin's Impressionist training rather than anticipating his later bold primitivism.