Bathing Boys at the Watermill in the Bois D'Amour

Bathing Boys at the Watermill in the Bois d'Amour (1886) by Paul Gauguin was painted at Pont-Aven during his first extended stay in Brittany, when he was working alongside Émile Bernard and developing the Synthetist approach that would define his Post-Impressionist contribution. The Bois d'Amour was a sacred grove of oak trees beside the Aven river that attracted the Pont-Aven artists repeatedly; Gauguin painted bathing figures in this naturalistic setting with a freedom that anticipates the more radical treatment of the nude in his later Tahitian works. The work is now in the Hiroshima Museum of Art.

The composition places the bathing figures in a naturalistic river landscape, with Gauguin using broader, simpler areas of color than he employed in his Impressionist phase. The handling shows him moving toward the flatter, more expressive treatment that would characterize his Synthetist work. The palette is rich greens and warm flesh tones.