The Loss of Virginity

The Loss of Virginity, painted in 1891 and now in the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia, is one of Gauguin's most disturbing and symbolically loaded pre-Tahitian works, combining a nude female figure with a fox — a symbol of perversity and sexuality in Breton and Celtic folklore. The young woman lies with closed eyes in a Breton landscape while the fox crouches on her chest; in the background a wedding procession moves along the road. Gauguin painted this in the months before his departure for Tahiti, in a state of intense artistic and personal upheaval. The painting has been read as a meditation on the loss of innocence, the end of his European life, or specifically as a statement about his relationship with Juliette Huet, who was pregnant with his child when he left.

Oil on canvas with a horizontal composition emphasizing the reclining figure — the nude's pale form against the Breton landscape, the dark fox a dissonant element that violates the pastoral setting. The background procession creates narrative distance and ironic contrast between the private erotic drama of the foreground and the social ritual in the distance.