Il prosciutto

Gauguin painted this slab of ham in 1889, a year he spent mostly broke and restless between Brittany and his eventual escape to the tropics. That summer Paris was busy with the world's fair and its brand-new iron tower, and Gauguin, shut out by the official jury, hung his own pictures in a cafe near the fairgrounds. Here he flattens nearly everything to bands of color, the ham on its pewter dish, a single glass of wine, a striped wall behind. He admired Cezanne and reportedly said, when starting a still life, let's do a Cezanne. The deep blue lines he uses to outline the onions come straight out of that lesson.