The Goose

In 1889 Gauguin gave up on Pont-Aven, which had filled with painters, and moved down the Breton coast to Le Pouldu, where he took a room at Marie Henry's inn with the Dutch painter Meijer de Haan. By October he was writing to Van Gogh about what they were doing to the dining room. With Paul Serusier and Charles Filiger they painted the room itself, walls and doors and window panes, and this goose went straight onto the plaster above a doorway, with the innkeeper's name lettered over its head. None of them had money, and when they left the decorated room stayed with Marie Henry. It was papered over and forgotten, then found again in the 1920s, and the panels were cut out and sold separately. Quimper bought this one at public auction in 1999.