Breton Girl Spinning

This was once a wall. In the autumn and winter of 1889 Gauguin was staying at an inn at Le Pouldu on the Brittany coast, La Buvette de la Plage, and he and the Dutch painter Meijer de Haan covered the dining room with decorations, working in oil straight onto the plaster. That is a technique Gauguin had never used, and the surface still shows it. Writing to Vincent van Gogh in December 1889 he described the figure simply as a peasant woman spinning at the sea's edge. He said nothing about the angel above her, though a girl who spins outdoors and sees a heavenly figure is how Joan of Arc was traditionally shown, and that is the title the painting often carries. Later tenants papered the room over. The spinner came to light again in 1924, under several layers of wallpaper.