In focus: Paul Gauguin’s Breton Village in the Snow

In early August 1903, French doctor Victor Segalen, the recently appointed medical officer of a colonial dispatch-boat in Papeete, arrived in the Marquesas Islands to collect the personal effects of Paul Gauguin, who had died at Atuona on Hiva Oa on 8 May.

Writing about Gauguin a short time later, Segalen mentioned a 'glacial vision of Breton winter', sitting on an easel, as being among the few pictures he found in the studio of Gauguin’s long fare (house). He referred to the landscape as 'the work of his last moments'.

The canvas was unsigned and undated, and the description stuck.

The following month, Segalen attended the second auction of Gauguin’s effects in Papeete and bought seven paintings, including Breton village in the snow.

The painting stayed in the Segalen family until 1952, when it was acquired by Musées Nationaux, Paris.

First exhibited in Paris in 1923 at Galerie L. Dru as part of a Gauguin retrospective, the painting was given the title Paysage de Bretagne (Breton landscape) and dated 1903.

When the work came to Australia for the first time, in 1939–40, as part of an exhibition that travelled to Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney, its title had become more specific – Le village breton sous la neige (The Breton village in the snow) – but the date remained 1903.

Then in 1959, the Louvre’s newly published catalogue of French paintings from the nineteenth century, Vol. 2, D–G, dated it to 1894. (The painting was in the collection of the Louvre at the time and was not sent to the Musée d’Orsay until its opening in 1986.)

The new date made sense, not least because Gauguin painted another winter landscape, Paris in the snow, which he signed and, crucially, dated 1894. And Gauguin was definitely in Pont-Aven in 1894, including several months spent in convalescence with a badly broken ankle.

Almost 20 years later, a Paris exhibition dated the work to 1894 and then in 1986, an exhibition at Musée de Pont-Aven dated it c.1894, which has been, with the odd exception, the consensus ever since.

Or has it?

The Wildenstein Plattner Institute’s (WPI) recently published digital catalogue raisonné of Paul Gauguin’s paintings from 1889-1903 begs to differ, dating the work c.1902–3.

So what’s going on? Did Gauguin paint the work in his beloved Brittany while back in France between his first and second journeys to French Polynesia? Or was it a product of his pining for cooler climes as his health deteriorated amid the tropical heat of the Marquesas?

'As you’ll see from the early literature on the catalogue raisonné site, the work is dated c.1902–03 and referred to as Gauguin’s final painting or painted "from memory" until c.1950,' says Dr Lucina Ward, Senior Curator, International Art.

'The catalogue raisonné may have retained this date to indicate the uncertainty about whether the painting remained unfinished, or was worked on again, while Gauguin was in French Polynesia (conventionally, this would be conveyed as c.1894 / 1903).'

The work, which is currently on display in Gauguin’s World: Tōna Iho, Tōna Ao, is accompanied by a caption that reads, in part: 'The painting likely dates to the artist’s third trip to Brittany … Gauguin may have taken the canvas to the Pacific as a reminder of France and the excitement of the artistic communities he founded in Brittany.'

Ward agrees that Breton village in the snow is a conundrum.

'Remembering, of course, that Gauguin’s audience was always in Paris and broader Europe, I think it quite likely that the painting was always intended for sale there and did not find a buyer or, indeed, that it had a more personal connection for the artist, hence the label within the show.'

Intriguingly, when Segalen acquired the work in Papeete, it came with the title of Niagara.

This mystery, at least, can be solved.

'The painting is said to have been presented upside down,' explains Ward, 'and referred to as the Niagara Falls by the auctioneer.'

Breton village in the snow (Village Breton sous la neige) is on display in Gauguin’s World: Tōna Iho, Tōna Ao until 7 October 2024.