Blue roofs of Rouen

In January 1884 Gauguin moved his family out of Paris to Rouen. Life in the Norman city was cheaper, and he hoped its well-off merchants would buy his pictures. The plan came to little, though he painted steadily there, about 40 canvases in less than a year. This one looks up a garden slope toward a hillside of houses, and the blue roofs of the title run across the middle of the picture. In the lower left corner a man in a cap is seen from behind, cut off by the edge of the canvas, and a much smaller figure walks along the path on the right. The Oskar Reinhart collection in Winterthur, which owns the painting, notes that it was probably left on deposit with the Paris dealer Paul Durand-Ruel on 9 April 1884. It passed through several dealers and a private collection in Bremen before Reinhart acquired it in 1931.