Bathers in Brittany, from the Volpini Suite: Dessins lithographiques

Bathers in Brittany, from the Volpini Suite: Dessins lithographiques

Paul Gauguin

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

On the fairgrounds of the Paris World's Fair of 1889, at Volpini's Café des Arts, Gauguin exhibited a brand new suite of ten zincographs printed on bright yellow paper. Known as the "Volpini Suite," the prints served as a pictorial souvenir of Gauguin's recent travels in Brittany, Martinique, and Arles. This print was likely inspired by the artist's sojourn in Le Pouldu, a small fishing village near Pont-Aven where he stayed in 1889-90, and shows a nude female figure tentatively approaching the sea. Her rustic clogs (the traditional footwear of Brittany) are discarded on the beach at lower left. The abstract, flowing forms that surround her evoke the wild and rocky shoreline of Brittany's coast. A second bather can be seen in the upper left of the composition, swimming in the waves.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Bathers in Brittany, from the Volpini Suite: Dessins lithographiquesBathers in Brittany, from the Volpini Suite: Dessins lithographiquesBathers in Brittany, from the Volpini Suite: Dessins lithographiquesBathers in Brittany, from the Volpini Suite: Dessins lithographiquesBathers in Brittany, from the Volpini Suite: Dessins lithographiques

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.