A group of Breton women in white caps, just out of a sermon, pray with eyes closed; before them, on a field of pure red, Jacob wrestles with the angel. A slanting tree trunk divides reality from vision. With this picture Gauguin broke with Impressionism and opened a new path of flat colour expressing an inner world.
Key facts
- Artist
- Paul Gauguin1848–1903 · French
- Date
- 1888
- Period
- Post-Impressionism1886–1905
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 72.2 × 91 cm
- Location
- Scottish National Gallery Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Actual size
Compared with an adult 170 cm tall
Palette
#AC411A#1A1817#5C4632#BBB29B#968167Background
In the summer of 1888 Gauguin was painting at Pont-Aven in Brittany in north-western France. The local women still wore traditional dress, and their devout religious life seemed to him a “primitive”, unspoilt spiritual world.
The story comes from Genesis chapter 32: Jacob wrestles through the night with a mysterious figure until dawn and is finally blessed. The women have just heard a sermon on this passage, and its scene rises before their eyes.
Gauguin was then developing with the young painter Émile Bernard, rejecting the copying of nature in favour of “synthesising” memory and feeling into simple shapes and colours. The painting is now in the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh.
Technique & composition
The whole is painted in flat vermilion, entirely unnatural. Gauguin used colour to express a spiritual state rather than appearance. Outlines are drawn in dark lines, the technique of .
divides reality from vision, a device borrowed from Japanese prints. are based on sumo wrestlers in Hokusai's sketchbooks. In the foreground fill large areas, making a bold flat pattern.
Details
Symbolism
The inner vision of faith
The vision is not a real event but what the women see in their minds. Gauguin set out to paint this “inner eye”: art should express imagination and faith, not merely record what is seen.
The painter's presence
The profile of at the lower right is often said to bear Gauguin's own features. The painter places himself in the picture, as the one who leads others into the vision.
Stories
- Did you know?
Gauguin intended to give the painting to the church at nearby Nizon and carried it there with friends. The priest found it strange and unsuitable for a church, and politely declined.
- Did you know?
is far too tiny for the figures, another disregard of perspective learned from Japanese prints.
Legacy
Vision after the Sermon is seen as the starting point of Symbolist painting and a turning point in Gauguin's career. Its liberation of colour directly inspired the Nabis, the Fauves and the Expressionists.
