ブルターニュの農婦たち

Gauguin painted these two Breton women in 1894, back in the village of Pont-Aven after his first long stay in Tahiti. He had come to France to sell the Tahitian work and raise money to return, and Brittany was familiar, cheap ground while he waited. But the islands had followed him home. Look at the women's hands and feet and heavy cheekbones. They carry the bulk of his Polynesian figures, set down here in wooden shoes and white Breton caps. Everything except the leaves is ringed in a dark outline, and the soft half-tones are gone, replaced by flat yellows and reds. Behind the two figures a man bends to work the harvested field, the old rural France Gauguin kept coming back to.