Woman Strolling
c. 1880
Medium
Tropical laurel (Terminalia), stained red and black
Dimensions
H.: 25 cm (9 3/4 in.)
Classification
sculpture
Department
Painting and Sculpture of Europe
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
229059
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
When Paul Gauguin first exhibited this doll-like figurine at the Sixth Impressionist Exhibition in 1881, critics disparaged what they considered its simplistic coloring and crudely whittled surface. The avant-garde set, however, celebrated its stylized form. Gauguin’s younger colleague Georges Seurat, who may have seen the sculpture at the exhibition and in Gauguin’s studio, presented similarly pared-down, columnar figures in A Sunday on La Grande Jatte—1884 only a few years later. Gauguin came...
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 ...