Cappello rosso

In the spring of 1886 Gauguin showed his canvases in the eighth and final group exhibition of the Impressionists, then left Paris that summer for the cheap artists' town of Pont-Aven in Brittany. This small still life comes from that hinge year. The flecked, busy brushwork is still the Impressionists' own, yet the staging is odd. A red hat lies overturned on the corner of a white tablecloth. Behind it sits a pile of three straw hats, and three dark fruits, nectarines or plums, are set in front, red answering red against the green of a few leaves. At the center, the hollow crown of that red hat opens into a small pool of near-black.