Lot Essay
Gauguin painted Vache accroupie in Brittany shortly before he left Pont-Aven to stay with Vincent Van Gogh in Arles from October to December 1888.
Through the generosity of one of his relatives, Gauguin had first visited Pont-Aven, a village in the south of Brittany, in July 1886. His aim was to settle in a place where he could paint undisturbed, in an environment free from the trappings of modern life. Since the 1860s Pont-Aven had been the centre of a thriving artistic community and in 1880 the English writer Henry Blackburn noted "Pont Aven is a favourite spot for artists, and a terra incognita to the majority of travellers in Brittany. Here the art student, who has spent the winter in the Latin Quarter in Paris, comes when the leaves are green, and settles down for the summer to study undisturbed" (H. Blackburn, Breton Folk, an Artistic Tour in Brittany, London, 1880, pp. 128-132).
Gauguin lived frugally in one of the cheapest inns in the village, and described the life he enjoyed there to his friend Emile Schuffenecker in 1888, declaring "J'aime la Bretagne, j'y trouve le sauvage, le primitif. Quand mes sabots résonnent sur ce sol de granit, j'entends le ton sourd, mat et puissant que je cherche en peinture" (see ed. Victor Merlhès, Correspondance de Paul Gauguin, Paris, 1984, p. 172. no. 141).
In the summer of 1888 several young painters arrived in Pont-Aven and Gauguin quickly found himself in the role of their teacher. "Surrounded by Laval, Moret and the newcomer Ernest Ponthier de Chamaillard, Gauguin went on working. [His paintings of this time] are joyful paintings, full of seductive charm and without complication... nature is the subject matter rather than the pretext for theoretical explanations...Gauguin remained true to his pictorial inclinations and refused to abandon the central theme common to all his works: the representation of humanity at its simplest and most primitive" (J. le Paul, Gauguin and the Impressionists at Pont-Aven, New York, 1983, p. 84).
The bold composition of Vache accroupie reflects Gauguin's interest in naïve works such as the Images d'Epinal and in Japanese prints. As Gauguin wrote to Schuffenecker in August 1888 "a word of advice, don't copy nature too much. Art is an abstraction; derive this abstraction from nature while dreaming before it...My latest works are well underway and I believe you will find in them a special note or rather affirmation of my previous research, the synthesis of form and colour derived from the observation of the dominant element only" (see R. Goldwater, Paul Gauguin, New York, 1957, p. 30).
Georges Wildenstein (op.cit.) has suggested that the cow in the present work can also be seen in a fan executed by Gauguin a year earlier in Martinique (W.223). He argues further that Gauguin developed the other major motifs in the fan in three significant oil paintings of 1887: Martiniquaise dans la campagne (W. 235), Autour des huttes (W.221) and Au bord de l'Étang (W. 222) which is housed in the Stichting Van Gogh Museum.
Through the generosity of one of his relatives, Gauguin had first visited Pont-Aven, a village in the south of Brittany, in July 1886. His aim was to settle in a place where he could paint undisturbed, in an environment free from the trappings of modern life. Since the 1860s Pont-Aven had been the centre of a thriving artistic community and in 1880 the English writer Henry Blackburn noted "Pont Aven is a favourite spot for artists, and a terra incognita to the majority of travellers in Brittany. Here the art student, who has spent the winter in the Latin Quarter in Paris, comes when the leaves are green, and settles down for the summer to study undisturbed" (H. Blackburn, Breton Folk, an Artistic Tour in Brittany, London, 1880, pp. 128-132).
Gauguin lived frugally in one of the cheapest inns in the village, and described the life he enjoyed there to his friend Emile Schuffenecker in 1888, declaring "J'aime la Bretagne, j'y trouve le sauvage, le primitif. Quand mes sabots résonnent sur ce sol de granit, j'entends le ton sourd, mat et puissant que je cherche en peinture" (see ed. Victor Merlhès, Correspondance de Paul Gauguin, Paris, 1984, p. 172. no. 141).
In the summer of 1888 several young painters arrived in Pont-Aven and Gauguin quickly found himself in the role of their teacher. "Surrounded by Laval, Moret and the newcomer Ernest Ponthier de Chamaillard, Gauguin went on working. [His paintings of this time] are joyful paintings, full of seductive charm and without complication... nature is the subject matter rather than the pretext for theoretical explanations...Gauguin remained true to his pictorial inclinations and refused to abandon the central theme common to all his works: the representation of humanity at its simplest and most primitive" (J. le Paul, Gauguin and the Impressionists at Pont-Aven, New York, 1983, p. 84).
The bold composition of Vache accroupie reflects Gauguin's interest in naïve works such as the Images d'Epinal and in Japanese prints. As Gauguin wrote to Schuffenecker in August 1888 "a word of advice, don't copy nature too much. Art is an abstraction; derive this abstraction from nature while dreaming before it...My latest works are well underway and I believe you will find in them a special note or rather affirmation of my previous research, the synthesis of form and colour derived from the observation of the dominant element only" (see R. Goldwater, Paul Gauguin, New York, 1957, p. 30).
Georges Wildenstein (op.cit.) has suggested that the cow in the present work can also be seen in a fan executed by Gauguin a year earlier in Martinique (W.223). He argues further that Gauguin developed the other major motifs in the fan in three significant oil paintings of 1887: Martiniquaise dans la campagne (W. 235), Autour des huttes (W.221) and Au bord de l'Étang (W. 222) which is housed in the Stichting Van Gogh Museum.