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french third republicconcept:era modern

The Vision after the Sermon

Oil on canvas (1888) by Paul Gauguin. Breton peasant women, after hearing a sermon on Jacob wrestling the angel, see the vision superimposed on a vivid red field. The founding work of Synthetism: flat colour zones, non-naturalistic space, and symbolic subject over observed reality. Held at the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh.

Scholarly Significance

Anchor Gauguin's Synthetism and the break with Impressionist naturalism with The Vision after the Sermon (1888), one of the pivotal works in the history of modern art.

Notes

  • ·Painted at Pont-Aven, Brittany, August 1888. Gauguin offered it to the local chapel of Nizon but the priest refused it as too modern.
  • ·The radically non-naturalistic red ground was a deliberate rejection of Impressionist concern with observed colour.
  • ·The diagonal tree dividing the 'real' foreground from the 'visionary' red space is a compositional innovation.
  • ·Van Gogh saw it at Pont-Aven and its influence on his work is debated; the two artists were together at Arles October–December 1888.
  • ·Purchased by the National Gallery of Scotland in 1925 from Ambroise Vollard.