グロアネックの祝祭

In the summer of 1888 the Pension Gloanec at Pont-Aven in Brittany was full of painters who did not agree with one another. The academic ones in the house would not have had a Gauguin hanging among them. So when he made this small still life as a gift for the innkeeper Marie-Jeanne Gloanec, on her name day of 15 August, he put someone else's name on it. He signed it for Madeleine Bernard, the 17-year-old sister of his friend the painter Émile Bernard, so that it would pass as the work of a beginner. It was accepted and hung. He was at work on the Vision after the Sermon in the same weeks, the picture that fixed the flat, unbroken colour the Pont-Aven group became known for. The borrowed signature is still there at the lower right, beside the words Fête Gloanec.