Woman in Front of a Still Life by Cézanne

Woman in Front of a Still Life by Cézanne (1890) at the Art Institute of Chicago is one of the most revealing documents of Gauguin's relationship to Cézanne's work. He owned several Cézannes — including a version of the Bathers that he kept through all his financial difficulties and took to Tahiti — and his incorporation of a recognizable Cézanne still life into the background of a figure painting was a deliberate act of dialogue between two painters working toward different aspects of what Post-Impressionism might achieve. The Cézanne in the background, with its characteristic color construction and slightly tilted spatial arrangement, serves as a reminder of the formal possibilities available to painting beyond conventional representation, while the dark-dressed sitter in the foreground demonstrates Gauguin's own evolving approach to the figure. By 1890 he was on the verge of his first Tahitian departure, and this painting belongs to the period of intense synthesis that preceded the journey. The Art Institute of Chicago's collection of Gauguins, which also includes the Woman in the Waves from the previous year, charts the rapid development of his mature style.

The Cézanne still life in the background is rendered with careful fidelity to its characteristic modulated brushwork. The foreground figure is treated more flatly and boldly, her dark dress a strong contrasting presence. The juxtaposition of handling styles — Cézanne's optical complexity against Gauguin's emerging Synthetism — is itself the painting's formal argument.