In 1886, after periods spent painting in Dieppe and Pont-Aven, Gauguin moved back to Paris. Here, he was introduced to the renowned ceramicist Ernest Chaplet, who worked for the porcelain factory Maison Haviland. Learning techniques in stoneware, earthenware, decorating and glazing from Chaplet, Gauguin began to produce ceramics as a means of generating income. Even though it soon became apparent his ceramics did not sell, Gauguin continued to work in the medium and it became an integral part of his artistic evolution. The ideas that he encountered in ceramics invigorated him and soon began to influence his painting.
At first Gauguin decorated blanks produced by Chaplet. For Vase decorated with Breton scenes he drew on his sketches of Breton traditional dress, using a regular cylindrical form and painting with different coloured glazes. The vase demonstrates his forays into cloisonnism, a term derived from the enamelling technique, often compared to stained glass. Gauguin drew his figures with incised black borders and areas of flat unmodulated colour, mimicking the thin metal wires used to partition areas of colour found in cloisonné. In his ceramics the outlines serve a practical purpose, but soon Gauguin introduced them into canvases, as a strategy to emphasise colour. If you look at the paintings nearby you will see how this technique characterises his work of the period.
Growing in confidence, Gauguin soon began to sculpt less conventional forms that recall the Ancient Peruvian earthenware he encountered as a child in Lima. In these extravagant works, such as Jug with a double spout hediscards utilitarian simplicity in favour of greater decorative elements. In other works, the decorative and functional elements merge: for example, in Gauguin’s nearby watercolour and charcoal drawing Chaplet stoneware jugs, the Roman myth of Leda and the swan is rendered into a ceramic form that uses the neck of the bird as a handle for a jug. Gauguin began to refer to his experimental ceramics as ‘monstrosities’ and often depicted them in his paintings and drawings. Take a look at Still life with profile of Laval, where Gauguin’s ceramic work anchors a still life composition.
In 1889, Gauguin asserted the importance of his work in stoneware and, writing in the journal Le Moderniste illustré that ‘ceramics is not a frivolous art … God made man with a bit of mud. With a bit of mud we can imitate metal and precious stones – with a bit of mud and a bit of genius!’
