Young Breton Woman

Young Breton Woman, painted in 1889 during Gauguin's second major Brittany period, depicts one of the Breton peasant women who became central subjects in his developing Synthetist style. By 1889 Gauguin's Pont-Aven canvases had transformed significantly from his Impressionist beginnings: simplified forms, flat color areas, strong contour lines, and a symbolic rather than descriptive color palette marked his mature approach. The Breton women in their traditional costumes — white caps, dark dresses, wooden sabots — offered Gauguin figures he could treat as both ethnographic subjects and formal elements in his increasingly abstract compositional arrangements. The untraced museum location suggests this work remains in private hands.

Oil on canvas with Gauguin's Synthetist technique at near full development — the Breton woman's form enclosed in firm outlines, her costume's white cap and dark dress rendered in flat color areas, the background simplified into broad planes. The traditional Breton costume provided a ready-made formal patterning of dark and light.