Paul Gauguin

Le Calvaire Breton The Wayside Shrine in Brittany Guérin 68; Mongan, Kornfeld & Joachim 50 woodcut, 1898-89, on tissue-thin  Japon paper, finely laid down on medium-heavy cream wove paper, with a narrow margin on the left and slightly trimmed into the subject elsewhere (Paul Gauguin most often cut his impressions down closely, sometimes significantly into the composition*) signed by the artist in black ink with a capital "P" lower right, and numbered "28", exceptionally with uniform ochre toning to the sheet; the print itself is very fine condition, with no defects visible aside from a fleck of black ink lower left S. 150x227mm. (The original woodblock, held in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, measures 16.5 × 26.5mm overall; see Note below) Provenance: formerly in the collection of the art historian, Lawrence Saphire (not listed among the 17 impressions that Mongan, Kornfeld & Joachim have identified)

Gauguin returned to France from Tahiti for the last time in July 1893, spending two years, mostly between Paris and Brittany, with a final stay in Pont Aven during 1894.  Back in Tahiti the following year, he undertook his last printmaking project in 1896-99, mixing Tahitian and Breton themes, often in the same series.

Le Calvaire Breton is usually dated between 1896 and 1889, as one of his late woodblock series, well after his return to Tahiti, though it incorporates the Deposition of Christ from the 15th century Calvary of Nizon, near Pont Aven*, which Gauguin painted in the picture of the same title, Le Calvaire Breton or Christ Vert in 1889 (Wildenstein 328 , now in the Musées Royaux des Beaux Arts de Belgique, below, left).

In place of the rugged Breton dunescape in the picture, Gauguin added a hilly winter village background to the print, with a hamlet in the background and teams of oxen moving across the front of the scene, to the right, toward what would appear to be an enclosure.

We know that Gauguin intended to use this print as the leftmost panel of a triptych of woodcuts, with the Char à Boeufs set in the middle and Misères Humaines (below, right) to the right. (See the cogent discussion by Richard Brettell of this series in the Gauguin exhibition catalogue, RMN, Paris 1989, pp. 417-421, as well as their theoretical assembly reproduced in the Art Institute of Chicago study of Gauguin's woodcuts.**)

In this context, the Calvaire is scenographically compatible with the Char à Boeufs, as it has the same snow-capped houses with snow-bound hills in the background, and the same hieratically aligned oxen.  With the palissade to the far right, abutting that of the Char à Boeufs, it may be seen that if each sheet were trimmed to whatever width, they would fit well.

(The Art Institute of Chicago's Technical Study also includes a demonstration that the two wood blocks were probably hewn from the same plank of indigenous wood, which reinforces Gauguin's intent.)

The subject of Gauguin's scenography however, is not simply a wintry village scene.  It relates more especially to well-known Breton folklore: it is said that the animals, on Christmas Eve, steadfastly keep watch (it is said that only toads and humans then sleep!), and they speak together in human tongue, with the keen ability to foresee the future.***

Given his mystical interest in such traditions, both in Brittany and Tahiti, Gauguin was certainly aware of this belief, which would have influenced his work, as well as the Breton scenography here present. 

Gauguin's concern with religious themes in any case ran through a good part of his life, and was summed up in the unpublished work, L'Esprit Moderne et le Catholicisme (now in the Saint Louis Art Museum, see https://www.slam.org/collection/objects/18302/?ocaid=modern-thought-and-catholicism-gauguin#mode/2up) a synthetist approach to the religions of the world that he completed in the Marquesas in 1902, and which here is evident in the cortege of oxen, moving from the Calvary to the Nativity.

It should be added too that our impression is a good example of Gauguin's exploration of using color in his late woodcut printmaking.  Gauguin's coloring is rather varied, most often in the
application of earthen colors, sometimes in zones or a thinned, uniform toning, elsewhere as a watercolor wash; these various techniques have been studied in depth by a curatorial team from the Art Institute of Chicago.****  Our impression is marked by a flat color field of ochre, what the AIC call "transfer coloring".

In conclusion, Gauguin's experiments in coloring the print sought to instill a stark visual impression of the cataclysmic gloaming that accompanied the deposition from the cross,
projected into Breton imagery resonant with local folklore in a panorama sweeping across from the crucifixion to worldly human misery of all kinds...

     _________________

*  See https://monumentum.fr/monument-historique/pa00090287/pont-aven-calvaire

**  See https://publications.artic.edu/gauguin/reader/141096/section/140419, and especially the analysis by Harriet Stratis:

"Gauguin took the thick, irregular pieces of wood he found in Tahiti, including more rectilinear planks, and crudely cut them down laterally to reduce their thickness. Taking into consideration that the indigenous wood was not commercially manufactured into regularly sized blocks, the unusual, irregular contours and grain in the wood used by Gauguin provide topographical reference points that allow them to be matched and paired. Five such pairs were identified during the course of this study. These include Wayside Shrine in Brittany and The Ox Cart" https://publications.artic.edu/gauguin/reader/141096/section/140412/p-140412-17

***  See François-Marie Luzel, Légendes Chrétiennes de la Basse Bretagne, Paris 1881, pp. 329 et seq. In one of the legends, on Christmas Eve, a large red ox spoke thus:
         - Our Lord is born, my children, the merciful and almighty God, and he was not born in a palace or in the house of a rich man of the earth;
            he came into the world, like the last of the unfortunate, in a manger, between an ox and a donkey! Glory to the Lord!

        see also: https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/L%C3%A9gendes_chr%C3%A9tiennes_de_la_Basse-Bretagne/Veill%C3%A9e_bretonne

        or

          - http://www.tresor-breton.bzh/2019/12/29/les-animaux-se-parlent-en-breton-la-nuit-de-noel/

**** See Daher, Sutherland, Stratis, & Casadio, Paul Gauguin's Noa Noa prints: Multi-analytical characterization of the printmaking techniques and materials, in Microchemical Journal, 2018, 138, pp.348-359.

There is also a video demonstration of these printing techniques that the Art Intitute of Chicago has produced, now visible online here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoVT2UZ_drs

  NOTES