‘Ephemeral… fugitive… contingent’: these words written by Charles Baudelaire in 1863 express the very nature of metropolitan life in the late nineteenth century. Urban renewal across Europe had given way to a new, fast-paced way of life, and nowhere was this more evident than in Paris: the then cultural centre of the western world. Crowds of people would converge upon Haussmann’s wide boulevards, swiftly navigating through the city to see and be seen by their fellow Parisians. Painting en plein air, the Impressionists aimed to capture these fleeting moments through rapid, loose brushstrokes which saw a complete revolution in pictorial technique. Having lived in Paris, Gauguin, Van Gogh and Cézanne were actively involved with the Impressionist
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Only a year after his birth, Gauguin and his family moved to Peru due to rising conservatism in Paris, exposing him to an exotic way of life to which he would eventually return. By his early twenties, Gauguin, now living in Paris, had married and was raising a family, whilst working as a successful stockbroker. However, art remained his true passion, showing an impressive ability as a painter and sketcher whilst collecting many works by the Impressionists. Encouraged by Pissarro, of whom he was a pupil, Gauguin began to exhibit his works at the Impressionist exhibitions, yet he would soon depart from the Parisian art scene. When the stock market collapsed in 1882, Gauguin lost his job and family, prompting him to abandon the city altogether in search of personal and artistic …show more content…
In Brittany, he aimed to capture this idea through romance and symbolism, depicting a spiritual, less civilised land far removed from the city. During his first year in Brittany, Gauguin painted Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, in which a group of peasant woman are seen to project the vision of a sermon onto the surrounding landscape. Ignoring the modernisation which was taking place within the region, Gauguin paints the women in antique headdress, deliberately romanticising rural life. Using a tree trunk to divide his canvas, Gauguin depicts Jacob’s struggle with the Angel in the top-right, conveying a proximity of the spiritual and physical which the artist saw as fundamental to Breton life. Influenced by cloisonnism and Japanese art - namely Hiroshige’s Plum Park - Gauguin works with broad planes of bright colour, actively rejecting realism for an abstracted and dreamlike
Only a year after his birth, Gauguin and his family moved to Peru due to rising conservatism in Paris, exposing him to an exotic way of life to which he would eventually return. By his early twenties, Gauguin, now living in Paris, had married and was raising a family, whilst working as a successful stockbroker. However, art remained his true passion, showing an impressive ability as a painter and sketcher whilst collecting many works by the Impressionists. Encouraged by Pissarro, of whom he was a pupil, Gauguin began to exhibit his works at the Impressionist exhibitions, yet he would soon depart from the Parisian art scene. When the stock market collapsed in 1882, Gauguin lost his job and family, prompting him to abandon the city altogether in search of personal and artistic …show more content…
In Brittany, he aimed to capture this idea through romance and symbolism, depicting a spiritual, less civilised land far removed from the city. During his first year in Brittany, Gauguin painted Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, in which a group of peasant woman are seen to project the vision of a sermon onto the surrounding landscape. Ignoring the modernisation which was taking place within the region, Gauguin paints the women in antique headdress, deliberately romanticising rural life. Using a tree trunk to divide his canvas, Gauguin depicts Jacob’s struggle with the Angel in the top-right, conveying a proximity of the spiritual and physical which the artist saw as fundamental to Breton life. Influenced by cloisonnism and Japanese art - namely Hiroshige’s Plum Park - Gauguin works with broad planes of bright colour, actively rejecting realism for an abstracted and dreamlike