Description
Paul Gauguin – Breton Peasant Women – hand-painted oil painting reproduction
Two Breton women stand on an ochre path and do not move. The one on the left is in profile, in a red skirt; the one on the right looks straight out at us. Both wear the white lace coif worn in Brittany. The picture was painted in 1894, after Gauguin had come back from Tahiti to Europe for a short while.
What is on the canvas
The left figure has a dark bodice and a wide red skirt, the right one a brown bib-apron over a white chemisette and a stick in her hand; a dark pail stands behind her. Beyond them a green field opens out, with red roofs at the upper left and a large blue-grey boulder between the two women. At the far left a small figure stoops at work. The touch is calm, the colour laid in flat areas and closed with a dark contour. The painting is landscape in format: 92.5 cm wide and 66 cm high. It is signed at the lower left.
1894, between two Tahitis
The canvas belongs to the interval between Gauguin’s first and second Tahitian stays, when he painted in Brittany again for a few months. The tropical years show: the areas of colour are broader and stiller than in the 1880s, the contour is decided, and the two women stand motionless, placed before us rather than caught in a moment. He came back to Brittany as someone who had already seen elsewhere. The original is oil on canvas.
The gift of the Kaganovitchs
The painting was given to the French state in 1973 by the collectors Max and Rosy Kaganovitch; since 1986 it has been in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, where it is catalogued as RF 1973 17. The couple built their collection over decades and passed it whole into public hands, so this canvas went from a private flat straight onto a museum wall. The measurement is the one in the museum’s national inventory: 66 cm high and 92.5 cm wide.
A hand-painted reproduction for your home
Our painter paints the picture 100 % by hand, in oil on canvas. With this motif that is what decides it: the thickness of the paint in the red skirt and the clean, unbroken contour around the figures are exactly what a flat printed surface smooths away. Before delivery you receive a photograph of the finished painting for approval, and if you would like a different tone of red we correct it and send it again only once you approve. We paint it in eight sizes; the closest to the original is 93 × 66 cm, while for a larger wall 120 × 90 cm is a frequent choice. You can also choose the frame and the stretcher frame. If Gauguin’s Brittany interests you, see also Rocks by the Sea and Young Christian Girl, and among the figure subjects Breton Boy. Painting to order takes 15–45 working days.
- Subject: Breton Peasant Women, Paul Gauguin, 1894, Brittany
- Technique: hand-painted canvas, oil on canvas, a reproduction – never a print
- Original: oil on canvas, 66 × 92.5 cm (height × width, landscape), Musée d’Orsay, Paris, inv. RF 1973 17
- Detail worth knowing: the canvas was given to the French state in 1973 by the collectors Max and Rosy Kaganovitch
