Breton Girls Dancing, Pont-Aven


Breton Girls Dancing, Pont-Aven, 1888
Paul Gauguin, French, 1848 - 1903
Oil on canvas, 28 3/4 x 36 1/2 in.. (73 x 92.7 cm)
Inscription: lower right: P. Gauguin 88-
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, NGA 1983.1.19

(From the museum website)
"Gauguin wrote to art dealer Theo van Gogh (brother of Vincent), .I am doing a gavotte bretonne: three little girls dancing in a hayfield . . . The painting seems original to me, and I am quite pleased with the composition.'"

"So established was Pont-Aven as an artists' colony that the village women expected to earn extra money through modeling and Gauguin's sense of artistic 'otherness' did not extend to rejecting what was on offer." (From _Gauguin_, by Belinda Thomson, page 440)

But Gauguin didn't stay there long. The area was too crowded with artists and also expensive, so he moved on.