빨간 모자

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.