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Lot Essay
The Comité Sérusier has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
In September 1888, Sérusier met Paul Gauguin at Pont-Aven, an occurrence which would dramatically transform his practice. Under Gauguin’s influence, he began to experiment with a new style of painting in which simple forms and flat colors were chosen for emotional rather than descriptive motives. Gauguin encouraged Sérusier to paint with pure color and to exaggerate his impressions in order to achieve pictorial coherence in his work. These early experiments resulted in Sérusier taking back to Paris a small panel he had painted under Gauguin’s tutelage, which provoked much discussion when he unveiled it to his fellow students at the Académie Julian. According to Maurice Denis, Gauguin had told Sérusier, “How do you see those trees? They are yellow. Well then, put down yellow. And that shadow is rather blue. So render it with pure ultramarine. Those red leaves? Use vermillion” (quoted in P. Sérusier, ABC de la peinture, suivi d’une étude sur la vie et l’oeuvre de Paul Sérusier par Maurice Denis, Paris, 1942, p. 42).
Sérusier returned to Brittany for the next few summers, working alongside Gauguin, Emile Bernard and Meyer de Haan. For these artists, the region represented a dramatic contrast to la vie moderne of Paris at the turn of the century. The Breton culture and way of life was quite distinctive in its unspoiled and timeless tranquility, and Sérusier and his colleagues were fascinated by the rustic beauty and simplicity of life in the region. As John Rewald explained, “It was not a particularly varied landscape, yet it had a character of peacefulness to which the almost superstitiously devout Catholicism of the peasants in their picturesque Breton costumes added a touch of medieval mysticism” (Post-Impressionism from Van Gogh to Gauguin, New York, 1956, p. 167).
The present work was painted circa 1890, at the height of Sérusier’s involvement with the Pont-Aven artists. Over the course of his time spent in Brittany, he had developed his own aesthetic to commemorate the mysticism of the natural world he observed around him. In the present work, the artist employs a rich palette to depict two laundresses carrying bundles on their backs amidst the verdant bank of a small waterfall. They are dressed in the typical costume of Breton peasants, the curvature of their bodies and parcels repeated in the undulating hills and trees of the surrounding landscape. The flowing waterfall is composed of a constellation of pink, red, green, white, yellow and blue pigments. This picture, once attributed to Gauguin, certainly abides by the words of Sérusier’s mentor: “The impression of nature must be wedded to the aesthetic sentiment which chooses, arranges, simplifies, and synthesizes. The painter ought not to rest until he has given birth to the child of his imagination” (P. Gauguin, quoted in ibid, p. 184).
In September 1888, Sérusier met Paul Gauguin at Pont-Aven, an occurrence which would dramatically transform his practice. Under Gauguin’s influence, he began to experiment with a new style of painting in which simple forms and flat colors were chosen for emotional rather than descriptive motives. Gauguin encouraged Sérusier to paint with pure color and to exaggerate his impressions in order to achieve pictorial coherence in his work. These early experiments resulted in Sérusier taking back to Paris a small panel he had painted under Gauguin’s tutelage, which provoked much discussion when he unveiled it to his fellow students at the Académie Julian. According to Maurice Denis, Gauguin had told Sérusier, “How do you see those trees? They are yellow. Well then, put down yellow. And that shadow is rather blue. So render it with pure ultramarine. Those red leaves? Use vermillion” (quoted in P. Sérusier, ABC de la peinture, suivi d’une étude sur la vie et l’oeuvre de Paul Sérusier par Maurice Denis, Paris, 1942, p. 42).
Sérusier returned to Brittany for the next few summers, working alongside Gauguin, Emile Bernard and Meyer de Haan. For these artists, the region represented a dramatic contrast to la vie moderne of Paris at the turn of the century. The Breton culture and way of life was quite distinctive in its unspoiled and timeless tranquility, and Sérusier and his colleagues were fascinated by the rustic beauty and simplicity of life in the region. As John Rewald explained, “It was not a particularly varied landscape, yet it had a character of peacefulness to which the almost superstitiously devout Catholicism of the peasants in their picturesque Breton costumes added a touch of medieval mysticism” (Post-Impressionism from Van Gogh to Gauguin, New York, 1956, p. 167).
The present work was painted circa 1890, at the height of Sérusier’s involvement with the Pont-Aven artists. Over the course of his time spent in Brittany, he had developed his own aesthetic to commemorate the mysticism of the natural world he observed around him. In the present work, the artist employs a rich palette to depict two laundresses carrying bundles on their backs amidst the verdant bank of a small waterfall. They are dressed in the typical costume of Breton peasants, the curvature of their bodies and parcels repeated in the undulating hills and trees of the surrounding landscape. The flowing waterfall is composed of a constellation of pink, red, green, white, yellow and blue pigments. This picture, once attributed to Gauguin, certainly abides by the words of Sérusier’s mentor: “The impression of nature must be wedded to the aesthetic sentiment which chooses, arranges, simplifies, and synthesizes. The painter ought not to rest until he has given birth to the child of his imagination” (P. Gauguin, quoted in ibid, p. 184).