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Ensayo del lote
La petite s’amuse is a verdant landscape that reveals Paul Gauguin’s love of nature and his family, while reflecting the formative influence of two fellow artists, Camille Pissarro and Paul Cézanne, on the development of his art. Gauguin almost certainly met Pissarro through his guardian, Gustave Arosa, a generous patron of contemporary artists. For several years, the two painted together, both in the studio and en plein air, fostering Gauguin’s enthusiasm for Impressionism. This affinity found expression not only in his collecting of works by artists associated with the movement, but also in his increasingly sophisticated assimilation of Impressionist techniques into his own practice.
Gauguin began collecting Impressionist art in late 1878. Having immersed himself in the movement, he developed a close relationship with Pissarro in the late 1870s, regarding him as his self-proclaimed “Master.” Pissarro would prove an important mentor, and it was while the two were painting together in Pontoise in mid-1881, around the time the present work was painted, that he introduced Gauguin to Cezanne. This encounter would have a profound impact on the younger artist, laying the groundwork for the development of the anti-naturalist, Synthetist style that would later distinguish his work.
Following their meeting, Gauguin acquired two works by Cezanne, including Nature morte au compotier (FWN. 780; The Museum of Modern Art, New York). Through his close study of Cezanne’s art, Gauguin began to move away from atmospheric explorations of light and space towards a more substantial, structured pictorial language. His canvases increasingly displayed “the distortion or sculpturing of space, forms built from faceted or simplified volumes, and an increasing emphasis on the surface of the picture; this he animated, disrupted or constructed by broadening or elongating his brushstrokes, grouping them in sometimes divergent sets of parallel marks” (S. Crussard, Gauguin, A Savage in the Making, Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings (1873–1888), Paris, 2002, vol. I, p. 52).
In La petite s’amuse, Gauguin’s young daughter Aline rests on the gently undulating bank of a pond, playfully tracing ripples across the water with a small branch. The surrounding grass is rendered in a profusion of green brushstrokes, their rhythmic density evoking the movement and luxuriance of the vegetation. The scene combines an intimate family moment with a sustained investigation of the expressive possibilities of paint, as Gauguin transforms the landscape into a richly patterned surface.
Aline was Gauguin’s second child and his only daughter with his wife, Mette. Born on Christmas Day in 1877, she was named after the artist’s mother and would have been three or four years old when this painting was executed. Gauguin was deeply attached to her, and she appears in several works from this period, including the paintings Intérieur avec Aline (W. 77; Millennium Gallery, Sheffield Museums) and La Petite rêve (W. 75; Museum Odrupgaard, Dyrehaven), both dating to 1881. His affection endured long after these early years: during his first stay in Tahiti in 1893, he composed a notebook entitled Cahier pour Aline (Bibliothèque de l’Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, Paris).
Gauguin’s profound attachment to nature, together with his desire to recover a simpler, more instinctive state of being—one he would later characterize as “savage”—would eventually lead him to seek environments far removed from the effects of industrialization. This impulse informed his productive periods in Pontoise and Pont-Aven, as well as his subsequent journeys to Martinique, Tahiti, and the Marquesas Islands. Yet his engagement with the natural world was already central to his work in 1881. In La petite s’amuse, the densely worked vegetation and the interplay of color convey not merely the appearance of a landscape but the artist’s physical and sensory immersion in it. Whether in France or in the more distant settings he would later explore, Gauguin regarded nature as something to be experienced over time and apprehended on its own terms. As he explained in his autobiographical memoir, “Wherever I go I need a certain period of incubation, so that I may learn every time the essence of the plants and trees, of all nature, in short, which never wishes to be understood or yield herself” (P. Gauguin, Paul Gauguin’s Intimate Journals, New York, 1936, p. 31).
Both intimate and formally ambitious, La petite s’amuse demonstrates Gauguin’s efforts in the early 1880s to forge a more personal pictorial language. His ambition was, as he wrote to Pissarro, to “paint very broadly and not monotonously” (quoted in R. Brettell and A.-B. Fonsmark, Gauguin and Impressionism, exh. cat., Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, 2005, p. 200). The painting’s vigorous brushwork and carefully orchestrated surface reveal an artist moving beyond the conventions of Impressionism while remaining deeply engaged with its possibilities. Reflecting on this formative period, Richard Brettell has observed that “Gauguin’s willingness to struggle competitively with others and to suppress his own strong will in collaborative working sessions surely contributed to the growing maturity of both his art and theory. The importance of Cézanne in this equation cannot be underestimated” (ibid., p. 171). In La petite s’amuse, the influence of these artistic exchanges converges with Gauguin’s personal world and his enduring fascination with nature, capturing a pivotal moment in the emergence of his distinctive artistic vision.
Gauguin began collecting Impressionist art in late 1878. Having immersed himself in the movement, he developed a close relationship with Pissarro in the late 1870s, regarding him as his self-proclaimed “Master.” Pissarro would prove an important mentor, and it was while the two were painting together in Pontoise in mid-1881, around the time the present work was painted, that he introduced Gauguin to Cezanne. This encounter would have a profound impact on the younger artist, laying the groundwork for the development of the anti-naturalist, Synthetist style that would later distinguish his work.
Following their meeting, Gauguin acquired two works by Cezanne, including Nature morte au compotier (FWN. 780; The Museum of Modern Art, New York). Through his close study of Cezanne’s art, Gauguin began to move away from atmospheric explorations of light and space towards a more substantial, structured pictorial language. His canvases increasingly displayed “the distortion or sculpturing of space, forms built from faceted or simplified volumes, and an increasing emphasis on the surface of the picture; this he animated, disrupted or constructed by broadening or elongating his brushstrokes, grouping them in sometimes divergent sets of parallel marks” (S. Crussard, Gauguin, A Savage in the Making, Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings (1873–1888), Paris, 2002, vol. I, p. 52).
In La petite s’amuse, Gauguin’s young daughter Aline rests on the gently undulating bank of a pond, playfully tracing ripples across the water with a small branch. The surrounding grass is rendered in a profusion of green brushstrokes, their rhythmic density evoking the movement and luxuriance of the vegetation. The scene combines an intimate family moment with a sustained investigation of the expressive possibilities of paint, as Gauguin transforms the landscape into a richly patterned surface.
Aline was Gauguin’s second child and his only daughter with his wife, Mette. Born on Christmas Day in 1877, she was named after the artist’s mother and would have been three or four years old when this painting was executed. Gauguin was deeply attached to her, and she appears in several works from this period, including the paintings Intérieur avec Aline (W. 77; Millennium Gallery, Sheffield Museums) and La Petite rêve (W. 75; Museum Odrupgaard, Dyrehaven), both dating to 1881. His affection endured long after these early years: during his first stay in Tahiti in 1893, he composed a notebook entitled Cahier pour Aline (Bibliothèque de l’Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, Paris).
Gauguin’s profound attachment to nature, together with his desire to recover a simpler, more instinctive state of being—one he would later characterize as “savage”—would eventually lead him to seek environments far removed from the effects of industrialization. This impulse informed his productive periods in Pontoise and Pont-Aven, as well as his subsequent journeys to Martinique, Tahiti, and the Marquesas Islands. Yet his engagement with the natural world was already central to his work in 1881. In La petite s’amuse, the densely worked vegetation and the interplay of color convey not merely the appearance of a landscape but the artist’s physical and sensory immersion in it. Whether in France or in the more distant settings he would later explore, Gauguin regarded nature as something to be experienced over time and apprehended on its own terms. As he explained in his autobiographical memoir, “Wherever I go I need a certain period of incubation, so that I may learn every time the essence of the plants and trees, of all nature, in short, which never wishes to be understood or yield herself” (P. Gauguin, Paul Gauguin’s Intimate Journals, New York, 1936, p. 31).
Both intimate and formally ambitious, La petite s’amuse demonstrates Gauguin’s efforts in the early 1880s to forge a more personal pictorial language. His ambition was, as he wrote to Pissarro, to “paint very broadly and not monotonously” (quoted in R. Brettell and A.-B. Fonsmark, Gauguin and Impressionism, exh. cat., Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, 2005, p. 200). The painting’s vigorous brushwork and carefully orchestrated surface reveal an artist moving beyond the conventions of Impressionism while remaining deeply engaged with its possibilities. Reflecting on this formative period, Richard Brettell has observed that “Gauguin’s willingness to struggle competitively with others and to suppress his own strong will in collaborative working sessions surely contributed to the growing maturity of both his art and theory. The importance of Cézanne in this equation cannot be underestimated” (ibid., p. 171). In La petite s’amuse, the influence of these artistic exchanges converges with Gauguin’s personal world and his enduring fascination with nature, capturing a pivotal moment in the emergence of his distinctive artistic vision.