A Fisherman Drinking Beside His Canoe
1894
Medium
Wood-block print, printed twice in brown and black ink, on cream wove Japanese paper laid down on cream wove Japanese paper
Dimensions
Image/primary/secondary support: 20.5 × 13.8 cm (8 1/8 × 5 7/16 in.)
Classification
woodcut
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
61361
Art Historical Context
In 1894, Paul Gauguin created *A Fisherman Drinking Beside Canoe*, a striking woodblock print that captures his fascination with Tahitian life during his transformative years in the South Pacific. Having fled the constraints of European society, Gauguin immersed himself Polynesian culture after arriving in Tahiti in 1891. This intimate scene of a fisherman pausing by his canoe embodies his Post-Impressionist vision—bold, flattened forms and symbolic simplicity that reject realistic perspective in favor of emotional and exotic resonance. Printed twice in brown and black inks on cream wove Japa...
About the Artist
Paul Gauguin · 1848–1903
Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) was a French Post-Impressionist painter whose bold experiments with color, form, and subject matter made him one of the most influential figures in the transition from 19th-century art to modernism. His rejection of European civilization for the perceived authenticity of 'primitive' cultures established an archetype of artistic exile that continues to resonate. Gauguin's ...