Detail of A Farm in Brittany by Gauguin in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, August 2010

Artist: Paul Gauguin (French, Paris 1848–1903 Atuona, Hiva Oa, Marquesas Islands)

Title: A Farm in Brittany

Date: ca. 1894

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 28 1/2 x 35 5/8 in. (72.4 x 90.5 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Bequest of Margaret Seligman Lewisohn, in memory of her husband, Sam A. Lewisohn, 1954

Accession Number: 54.143.2


Gallery Label:

Gauguin returned to France from Tahiti in August 1893. The following summer, he traveled to Brittany, where he remained for some six months. Breton culture, infused with vestiges of its pagan Celtic past, appealed to his taste for the primitive and the exotic. The two-year interlude that was Gauguin's last stay in France, from August 1893 to July 1895, marked a period of artistic transition for him. Here, the short, horizontal strokes of paint applied to the farmhouses recall the broken brushwork of his earlier, Impressionist works. His palette evokes that of his Tahitian paintings, lending an exotic flavor to this image of rural France.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/Works_of_Art/collection_database/europe...