Paul Gauguin: 12 works

'What makes this still life distinctive is not only the technique but also the individual motifs that Gauguin used.'

'This work from the first half of his stay in Brittany represents a transitional stage from the Impressionist style to his own more planar forms. While the palette is subdued and the touch resembles that of the Impressionists, each form of the separate objects is expressed in large color blocks edged by outlines, clearly foreshadowing the style that would emerge in the latter half of Gauguin's stay in Brittany.'

'In autumn 1892, the artist Richard Bergh bought Landscape from Bretagne from Gauguin's wife.'

'With his first pictures he regularly featured in the group exhibitions of the Impressionists. Leaving behind the European illusionist traditions, he increasingly sought stimulation in exotic and primitive cultures.'

'Shortly after quitting his job as a stockbroker, Paul Gauguin moved to Brittany in search of a "savage and primitive" society uncorrupted by modern life. As seen here, he developed a style of painting based on bright, flat patches of unmodulated color that take on a life of their own.'

'In his book Noa Noa Gauguin describes his experience of Tahiti and its inhabitants on his arrival in 1891. He describes the woman in the portrait thus: "She was not pretty -- at least not by European standards -- but beautiful."'

'Mata Mua (In Olden Times) is a hymn to the natural lifestyle Gauguin so fervently sought.'

'The Moon and the Earth is Gauguin's depiction of an ancient Polynesian myth, which he had read in the accounts of the early-nineteenth-century Dutch explorer J.A.'

'By means of clear-cut contours and flatly divided colors, Gauguin blended richly implicative images with ornamentation and is known as a representative artist of Symbolism and Synthetism in France at the end of the nineteenth century. In his later years, he left Europe for Tahiti and created works acutely questioning the significance of the human existence.'

'In his later years, he left Europe for Tahiti and created works acutely questioning the significance of the human existence.'

'By means of clear-cut contours and flatly divided colors, Gauguin blended richly implicative images with ornamentation and is known as a representative artist of Symbolism and Synthetism in France at the end of the nineteenth century.'

'Gauguin lived out his last months at Atuona, on the Marquesas Islands, in a hut mounted on stilts, made of wood, palm leaves and bamboo. He decorated the door with a set of sculptured panels, directly hewn out of sequoia wood.'