In the Waves (Dans les Vagues)
Paul Gauguin
From €54
📦 Sitewide sale now on: 30% off + free shipping 📦
Collection
Shop Paul Gauguin Prints
Museum-quality reproductions on 310gsm textured cotton rag paper.
Shop all prints by Paul GauguinArtistic Style
Style Evolution
Gauguin moved from responses to Impressionism in Brittany—where he pared down detail and emphasized decorative shape—to a South Pacific period that embraced flattened space, symbolic subject matter, and a bold, non-naturalistic palette influenced by folk and non-Western traditions.
Palette
- Vivid, non-naturalistic color contrasts
- Warm tropical hues
- Deep, saturated tones
Subjects
- Figures and portraits
- Island landscapes and tropics
- Mythic and symbolic scenes
- Everyday domestic and ritual imagery
Techniques
- Flattened planes of color
- Strong contour lines (bold outline)
- Decorative patterning
- Synthetist composition (simplified forms)
- Mixed-media printmaking
Topics
Post-ImpressionismSynthetismPrimitivismFrench artistsSymbolismFigurative paintingBold colorDecorative art
Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) was a French Post-Impressionist painter whose bold colors, flattened forms and turn to primitivism reshaped modern art.
Learn about the life of Paul Gauguin
Biography
Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) was a French Post-Impressionist painter whose bold colors, flattened forms and turn to primitivism reshaped modern art and inspired generations of avant-garde artists.
Early Life and Background
Paul Gauguin was born in Paris in 1848. After an early career in commerce and time at sea, he turned decisively to art in adulthood. His outsider status—partly shaped by travel, periods living in Brittany, and later life in the South Pacific—fed a restless search for new visual languages beyond academic naturalism.
Artistic Development and Periods
Gauguin's career unfolded through distinct phases defined by place, experimentation, and a pursuit of simplified, symbolic form.
The Pont-Aven and Brittany Period
In Brittany he absorbed folk motifs and worked alongside younger painters seeking alternatives to Impressionism. He developed stronger contours, decorative patterning, and a palette that moved away from strict optical realism.
The Tahiti and South Pacific Periods
Gauguin's travels to Tahiti and later to the Marquesas Islands marked a decisive shift: he embraced so-called “primitive” subjects, symbolic narratives, and a more emblematic, flattened pictorial space that rejected European illusionism.
Major Works and Achievements
Gauguin is celebrated for pioneering a decorative, symbolic approach to painting that emphasized strong outlines, areas of pure color, and evocative, often mythic subject matter. His restless experimentation helped establish Post-Impressionism as a broad field that expanded modern art's expressive possibilities.
Style and Technique
Gauguin favored simplified, flat planes of color, expressive contour lines, and a decorative surface rhythm. He often combined influences from European avant-garde movements and non-Western visual sources, using deliberate color contrasts and stylized forms to convey mood and narrative rather than naturalistic detail.
Influence and Legacy
Gauguin’s work helped catalyze Primitivism and Symbolism in modern art and strongly influenced artists such as Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. His emphasis on color as expressive language and on formal simplification informed successive generations of modernists and decorative arts.
Personal Life Context
Gauguin’s life was marked by periods of financial instability, extensive travel, and an ongoing search for cultural alternatives to metropolitan European life. These personal circumstances were inextricable from his artistic experimentation.
Recognition and Market Value
Collectors prize Gauguin for his pioneering role in modernism, the decorative and emotive power of his canvases, and their cultural impact. His paintings remain highly sought after for museum collections and private buyers who value works that make a strong visual statement and anchor interiors with color, pattern, and exoticized narrative.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are Paul Gauguin's most famous paintings?+
Paul Gauguin is widely known for works produced during his Brittany and South Pacific periods that emphasize flattened forms, bold color, and symbolic content. While many titles are well known in art history, collectors and museums prize his canvases from the 1880s–1890s for their decorative power,,
What is Paul Gauguin's style?+
Gauguin's style is associated with Post-Impressionism and Synthetism: flattened planes, strong outlines, simplified forms, and a decorative use of color. He moved away from Impressionist optical realism toward symbolic composition and an emphasis on emotional or narrative content.
What made Paul Gauguin unique?+
Gauguin's uniqueness lies in his deliberate rejection of photographic naturalism in favor of symbolic, decorative form; his integration of non-Western visual influences; and his use of color and simplified shapes to convey mood and mythic narrative. This approach helped open modern art to more styl‑
What are three of Paul Gauguin's masterpieces?+
Gauguin's masterpieces are typically drawn from his Brittany and Tahitian periods and are celebrated for their compositional boldness and color. Museums and collectors consider works from these phases central to his achievement; they exemplify his move toward flattened space, vivid palette, and evoc
What movement was Paul Gauguin part of?+
Gauguin is most often associated with Post-Impressionism and is a leading figure in the development of Synthetism and Primitivism. His work reacted against Impressionism's focus on naturalistic light and color, favoring instead symbolic content, decorative surfaces, and influences drawn from non‑
What influenced Paul Gauguin?+
Gauguin drew on a mix of sources: the innovations of the Impressionists and their successors, Japanese woodblock prints (ukiyo-e), Brittany's folk traditions, and visual cultures he encountered in the South Pacific. These influences combined with his own search for simplified, symbolic form.
Where can I see Paul Gauguin's work?+
Major public collections around the world hold Gauguin's paintings and prints, especially works from his Brittany and Tahiti periods. Check major museums with strong modern art collections and rotating exhibitions; museum websites and catalogues provide current display information for specific works
