La belle Angèle

La belle Angèle, now at the Musée d'Orsay, is a portrait of Marie-Angélique Satre, the wife of Pont-Aven's mayor, painted by Gauguin in 1889. The work's distinctive format—the sitter placed in one half of the composition beside a Peruvian ceramic figure—announces his interest in placing Western subjects alongside non-European objects. Satre reportedly hated the portrait and demanded that Gauguin take it back; it was later purchased by Degas. The painting's flat, poster-like treatment anticipates the decorative direction of his Tahitian work.

Gauguin divides the canvas into two zones: the frontal, formally dressed figure on one side and a still-life element on the other. The face is painted with smooth, simplified planes and the costume with areas of flat local color, the whole framed by a bold painted oval that reinforces the composition's decorative, non-illusionistic character.