The Flowered Barrier, Le Pouldu

The same wooden gate turns up in a painting by Gauguin, now in Zurich. In 1889 the two men were working side by side at Le Pouldu, a hamlet on the Breton coast, and here Sérusier takes the motif for himself. The gate is far from straight. Its top rail curves and dips, and the thin uprights lean with it, as if the wood had been bent by hand. Behind it stands a young woman in a light coiffe and apron, one hand raised over the rail. Across the path a second woman waits in dark blue, with a dark headscarf and wooden clogs. Two large grey-blue rocks lie in the grass. Tall trunks rise before a long farmhouse with a red-brown thatched roof, and a flowering bush spills over in pink and white. The Sérusier catalogue notes that the women's dress is the local costume of Le Pouldu. He signed with his initials in the lower corner.