In early 1889 Gauguin, encouraged by art dealer Theo Van Gogh, began making prints. Likely helped by his artist-friend Emile Bernard in Paris, Gauguin took up zincography, a type of lithography made on sheets of zinc. This style of printing allowed him to experiment with graphic line work and subtle washes of tone, processes he quickly mastered. Perhaps inspired by commercial posters, or the tones of paper used in Japanese woodblock prints, he chose bold yellow paper on which to print.
Gauguin experimented with unusual formats for these zincographs: prints such as Dramas of the sea are composed in the shape of a fan, while Design for a plate: Leda and the swan is circular, with handwriting printed both forward and reversed. Many of these prints playfully extend beyond their borders: if you take a closer look at Joys of Brittany, you will see two dogs standing outside the frame, one looking behind the bordered composition. At the top, a haystack extends beyond the margins.
The eleven zincographs that Gauguin produced make up the Volpini suite of 1889. They revisit themes and motifs from his paintings made in Brittany (July–October 1886), Martinique (May–October 1887) and Arles (October–December 1888). Two of these prints, Old women of Arles and Laundresses, faithfully reproduce his paintings. But for the remainder Gauguin decided to experiment. He adapted and transformed figures and motifs from earlier work into new compositions. If you compare the Breton bathers print to the nearby painting, Young Breton bathers, you’ll notice similarities such as the clogs at the bottom of bothworks. Likewise Design for a plate: Leda and the swan reimagines the watercolour and gouache composition Chaplet stoneware jugs c 1888 in the previous room. Gauguin continued to repeat and adapt elements of earlier works throughout his life, particularly in his prints.
The prints of the Volpini suite were grouped as a portfolio for an unofficial exhibition at the Exposition Universelle, or World fair, in Paris in 1889. Aware that the Palais des Beaux-Arts did not intend to represent the Impressionist movement in the fair, Gauguin, Emile Schuffenecker, Emile Bernard, Charles Laval and George-Daniel Monfreid formed the Impressionist and Synthetist Group. The artists, who were linked by their use of bold colour and cloisonnism, decided to find a venue within the grounds of the fair. They approached the undecorated Café des Arts, and the proprietor Monsieur Volpini agreed to hang more than one hundred paintings by the group. Gauguin’s portfolio of prints, which assumed the name the Volpini suite, was available for viewing on request. While their exhibition attracted little critical attention and Gauguin eventually gave away most of his prints, it reinforced his reputation as an outsider and agitator. He published the essay ‘Notes on the art at the Exposition Universelle’ in which he accused the French state of promoting artistic mediocrity.
