The Talisman (The Aven at the Bois d'Amour)

Turn this little panel over and you find a note in Sérusier's hand. It says it was made in October 1888, under the direction of Gauguin, by P. Sérusier, at Pont-Aven. That same month Gauguin left Brittany for Arles, where Van Gogh was waiting for him. The place is the Bois d'Amour, a wood along the river just outside the town. The Musée d'Orsay reads the painted shapes as a path, a row of beech trees, the riverbank and a mill, with the trunks and their reflections standing in the water as upright strokes of pale blue. Very little is described. A blaze of yellow covers most of the surface, a red band marks the bank, and the mill is a blue-grey block with a dark roof. The panel later belonged to the painter Maurice Denis, who first told its story in print in 1903, and the museum bought it in 1985.