ラヴァルの横顔のある静物

By late 1886 Gauguin had given up his job on the stock exchange and was living hand to mouth as a painter. He had just come back from Pont-Aven in Brittany, where he had met the young artist Charles Laval, who appears here cut off at the edge of the canvas, watching. The clipped framing is borrowed from Degas. The apples, and the parallel strokes that build them, nod to Cezanne, whose work Gauguin admired and collected. The strange dark shape rearing up on the left is a glazed pot Gauguin had just made himself. He had taken up ceramics that autumn and was proud of this one, telling his wife it was worth 100 francs. The pot has since vanished, and may have been destroyed.