Spirit (Gen. 32:24–30). The women pray devoutly before the appari-
tion, as they would have before the roadside crucifix shrines that
were familiar features of the Breton countryside. Gauguin departed
from optical realism and composed the picture elements to focus the
viewer’s attention on the idea and intensify its message. The images
are not what the Impressionist eye would have seen and replicated
but what memory would have recalled and imagination would have
modified. Thus the artist twisted the perspective and allotted the
space to emphasize the innocent faith of the unquestioning women,
and he shrank Jacob and the angel, wrestling in a ring enclosed by a
Breton stone fence, to the size of fighting cocks. Wrestling matches
were regular features at the entertainment held after high mass, so
Gauguin’s women are spectators at a contest that was, for them, a fa-
miliar part of their culture.
Gauguin did not unify the picture with a horizon perspective,
light and shade, or a naturalistic use of color. Instead, he abstracted
the scene into a pattern. Pure unmodulated color fills flat planes and
shapes bounded by firm lines: white caps, black dresses, and the red
field of combat. The shapes are angular, even harsh. The caps, the
sharp fingers and profiles, and the hard contours suggest the auster-
ity of peasant life and ritual. Gauguin admired Japanese prints,
stained glass, and cloisonné metalwork (FIGS. 16-2and 16-3). These
art forms contributed to his own daring experiment to transform
traditional painting and Impressionism into abstract, expressive pat-
terns of line, shape, and pure color. His revolutionary method found
its first authoritative expression in Vision after the Sermon.
WHERE DO WE COME FROM? After a brief period of asso-
ciation with van Gogh in Arles in 1888, Gauguin, in his restless
search for provocative subjects and for an economical place to live,
settled in Tahiti (MAP33-1). The South Pacific island attracted Gau-
guin because it offered him a life far removed from materialistic Eu-
rope and an opportunity to reconnect with nature. Upon his arrival,
he discovered that Tahiti, under French control since 1842, had been
extensively colonized. Disappointed, Gauguin tried to maintain his
vision of an untamed paradise by moving to the Tahitian country-
side, where he expressed his fascination with primitive life and bril-
liant color in a series of striking decorative canvases. Gauguin often
based the design, although indirectly, on native motifs, and the color
owed its peculiar harmonies of lilac, pink, and lemon to the tropical
flora of the island.
Despite the allure of the South Pacific, Gauguin continued to
struggle with life. His health suffered, and his art had a hostile recep-
tion. In 1897, worn down by these obstacles, Gauguin decided to take
his own life, but not before painting a large canvas titled Where Do
We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (FIG. 31-19).
This painting can be read as a summary of Gauguin’s artistic meth-
ods and of his views on life. The scene is a tropical landscape, popu-
lated with native women and children. Despite the setting, most of
the canvas surface, other than the figures, consists of broad areas of
flat color, which convey a lushness and intensity.
In a letter to his friend Charles Morice, Gauguin shed light on
the meaning of this painting:
Where are we going? Near to death an old woman....What are we?
Day to day existence....Where do we come from? Source.Child. Life
begins....Behind a tree two sinister figures, cloaked in garments of
sombre colour, introduce, near the tree of knowledge, their note of
anguish caused by that very knowledge in contrast to some simple
beings in a virgin nature, which might be paradise as conceived by
humanity, who give themselves up to the happiness of living.^11
Where Do We Come From? is, therefore, a sobering, pessimistic image
of the life cycle’s inevitability. Gauguin’s attempt to commit suicide
in Tahiti was unsuccessful, but he died a few years later, in 1903, in
the Marquesas Islands, his artistic genius still unrecognized.
PAUL CÉZANNE Although a lifelong admirer of Eugène
Delacroix,Paul Cézanne(1839–1906) allied himself early in his ca-
reer with the Impressionists, especially Pissarro. He at first accepted
their color theories and their faith in subjects chosen from everyday
life, but his studies of the Old Masters in the Louvre persuaded him
that Impressionism lacked form and structure. Cézanne declared he
wanted to “make of Impressionism something solid and durable like
the art of the museums.”^12836 Chapter 31 EUROPE AND AMERICA, 1870 TO 190031-19Paul Gauguin,Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? 1897. Oil on canvas, 4 63 – 4 12 3 . Museum of Fine Arts,
Boston (Tompkins Collection).
In search of a place far removed from European materialism, Gauguin moved to Tahiti, where he used native women and tropical colors to present
a pessimistic view of the inevitability of the life cycle.
1 ft.