Description
Paul Gauguin – Young Christian Girl (Bretonne en Prière) – hand-painted oil painting reproduction
She is a Breton girl, but the dress is not Breton. The canvas was painted in 1894, oil on canvas, 65.3 × 46.7 cm (height × width, so an upright format), and it is held by the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, under accession number 1986.22. The girl joins her hands, bows her head and closes her eyes. Here that prayer is made again under the brush: a hand-painted oil painting reproduction, oil on canvas, with no printing.
A dress that does not belong in Brittany
On her head is a dark Breton cap, at her throat a thin chain with a small cross, and she wears a long yellow gown with a straight collar and scattered coloured dots. The museum that owns the picture reads it this way: instead of the white lace and dark clothing of Breton women, she wears a dress of the kind Christian missionaries brought to the islands of the South Seas. That is the museum’s reading and we give it as a reading rather than as fact – but it is exactly what the canvas shows.
Brittany between two Tahitis
The year is not incidental. Gauguin came back to France from his first Tahitian stay in 1893, spent 1894 in Brittany, and in June 1895 sailed back to the Pacific for good. This picture is therefore a Breton subject painted by the hands of a man who had just returned from Tahiti. That is why two worlds meet in it: the Breton cap and the prayer on one side, the flat colour and the mission gown on the other.
A broken leg, May 1894
The Breton year ended badly. In May 1894 Gauguin broke his leg above the ankle in a brawl with sailors and for months could not stand at an easel; instead of painting he worked on drawings and prints. That circumstance is what makes the canvas scarce: it belongs to the short window in which he could still paint. In the lower right corner stand the signature P Gauguin and the year 94.
A hand-painted reproduction for your home
The yellow takes up almost the whole surface, so this picture lights a corner by itself and carries a darker wall well. We paint it in eight sizes; 47 × 65 cm is the nearest to the original, while for a larger wall 90 × 120 cm is a frequent choice. From the same Breton circle come Breton Girls Dancing, Pont-Aven – the same village, but dancing instead of praying; The Green Christ sets faith into the Breton landscape, and Breton Eve is likewise a Breton figure doing something other than what you expect.
- Subject: Young Christian Girl (Bretonne en prière), Paul Gauguin, 1894, Brittany
- Technique: hand-painted oil painting reproduction on canvas – never printed
- Original: oil on canvas, 46.7 × 65.2 cm, Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, acc. 1986.22
- Interesting fact: in May 1894 Gauguin broke his leg in a brawl with sailors and for months could not paint standing up
