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Brittany and symbolic colour

The Yellow Christ sets a yellow figure of Christ within an autumnal landscape, with Breton women gathered nearby. In Vision After the Sermon, the red ground separates the pictured event from an everyday account of the visible world. Both works show how Gauguin could use colour and simplified space to give a religious subject a strongly imaginative character.

Tahitian figures and landscapes

Two Tahitian Women presents two figures against a dark, leafy background. Elsewhere in the collection, Tahitian subjects include women at rest, trees, houses, shorelines and groups of figures. These paintings should be approached as Gauguin’s constructed images, shaped by his choices of pose, colour and setting, rather than as a neutral record of island life.

Flowers, fruit and changing settings

The collection also includes European landscapes, self-portraits and still lifes of flowers, fruit and domestic objects. This range offers a way to compare Gauguin’s treatment of familiar subjects with his more explicitly symbolic compositions. Browse the wider still-life collection for further arrangements of objects, or landscape prints for related views of the natural world.

Related artists and collections

Continue with Paul Sérusier for Breton subjects and simplified colour, Maurice Denis for decorative figure painting, and Pierre Bonnard for intimate scenes built through colour. The Post-Impressionist collection places these different approaches together.

Read more in our guide to Paul Gauguin.