Gauguin, Paul (1848-1903)
Nature morte aux huîtres (Still Life with Oysters)
1876
Oil on canvas, 53.34 × 93.35 cm
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond
This large-format still life is among the earliest examples of Gauguin‘s artistic production. When the artist signed it, he was in his late twenties and working as a stockbroker. The same year, his 1875 Landscape from Viroflay (Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen) became his first work to be accepted for public exhibition at the Salon. He had begun receiving artistic training and frequenting a studio to practice life drawing only a few years earlier. This germinal experiment in the still-life genre illustrates Gauguin‘s interest in modern methods and styles of painting even while he was still mastering his technique with the medium. The emphatic brush marks and salient use of black catch the viewer’s eye using tactics that immediately bring to mind Manet‘s avant-garde approach. Over the next five years, Gauguin collected paintings by Manet and other artists, including Jongkind and some of the leading figures of Impressionism, absorbing their influence into his evolving artistic practice. The stock market crash of 1882 put a definitive end to his career in finance, and he was finally able to dedicate himself to painting full time. (VMFA)