The Flageolet Player on the Cliff

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The Flageolet Player on the Cliff
French: Le joueur de flageolet sur la falaise
Gauguin, Paul - The Flageolet Player on the Cliff - Google Art Project.jpg
Artist Paul Gauguin
Year1889
Type Oil painting on canvas
Dimensions70.96 cm× 91.28 cm(27.938 in× 35.938 in)
Location Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis

The Flageolet Player on the Cliff is an 1889 oil painting by French artist Paul Gauguin, located in the Indianapolis Museum of Art, which is in Indianapolis, Indiana. It depicts a Breton couple on a narrow path precipitously overlooking the Atlantic. [1]

Oil painting Process of painting with pigments that are bound with a medium of drying oil

Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments with a medium of drying oil as the binder. Commonly used drying oils include linseed oil, poppy seed oil, walnut oil, and safflower oil. The choice of oil imparts a range of properties to the oil paint, such as the amount of yellowing or drying time. Certain differences, depending on the oil, are also visible in the sheen of the paints. An artist might use several different oils in the same painting depending on specific pigments and effects desired. The paints themselves also develop a particular consistency depending on the medium. The oil may be boiled with a resin, such as pine resin or frankincense, to create a varnish prized for its body and gloss.

France Republic in Europe with several non-European regions

France, officially the French Republic, is a country whose territory consists of metropolitan France in Western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The metropolitan area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean. It is bordered by Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany to the northeast, Switzerland and Italy to the east, and Andorra and Spain to the south. The overseas territories include French Guiana in South America and several islands in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. The country's 18 integral regions span a combined area of 643,801 square kilometres (248,573 sq mi) and a total population of 67.02 million. France is a unitary semi-presidential republic with its capital in Paris, the country's largest city and main cultural and commercial centre. Other major urban areas include Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Lille and Nice.

Paul Gauguin French artist

Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a French post-Impressionist artist. Unappreciated until after his death, Gauguin is now recognized for his experimental use of color and Synthetist style that were distinct from Impressionism. Toward the end of his life, he spent ten years in French Polynesia, and most of his paintings from this time depict people or landscapes from that region.

Contents

Description

The Flageolet Player on the Cliff is a panoramic view of a rugged patch of shoreline in Brittany, viewed from a dizzying overhead perspective. The unusual point of view and brilliant patchwork of colors make the painting somewhat challenging visually, but it is not an inaccurate representation of the scene. Period photographs show similar wave patterns, and Gauguin wrote that the sand was rose, rather than yellow. On a narrow path stand a boy and girl; she holds a scythe for cutting the wheat represented by the patch of yellow in the lower right corner, while he plays a flageolet, a local flute. These attributes, scythe and flute, represent Gauguin's enduring attachment to "the harmonies of Breton life." [2] The lower right corner is signed "P. Gauguin 89."

Brittany Historical province in France

Brittany is a cultural region in the west of France, covering the western part of what was known as Armorica during the period of Roman occupation. It became an independent kingdom and then a duchy before being united with the Kingdom of France in 1532 as a province governed as if it were a separate nation under the crown.

Flageolet woodwind instrument

The flageolet is a woodwind instrument and a member of the fipple flute family. Its invention was erroneously ascribed to the 16th-century Sieur Juvigny in 1581. There are two basic forms of the instrument: the French, having four finger holes on the front and two thumb holes on the back; and the English, having six finger holes on the front and sometimes a single thumb hole on the back. The latter was developed by English instrument maker William Bainbridge, resulting in the "improved English flageolet" in 1803. There are also double and triple flageolets, having two or three bodies that allowed for a drone and countermelody. Flageolets were made until the 19th century.

Historical information

In 1889, Gauguin traveled to Le Pouldu, a remote coastal village in Brittany. Its dramatic scenery evoked a strong response in him. Applying the Pont-Aven School approach called Synthetism, he merged the actual appearance of the scene, his emotional reaction to it, and his artistic sense of design. [1]

Pont-Aven School art movement

Pont-Aven School encompasses works of art influenced by Pont-Aven and its surroundings. Originally the term applied to works created in the artists' colony at Pont-Aven, which started to emerge in the 1850s and lasted until the beginning of the 20th century. Many of the artists were inspired by the works of Paul Gauguin, who spent extended periods in the area in the late 1880s and early 1890s. Their work is frequently characterised by the bold use of pure colour and their Symbolist choice of subject matter.

Synthetism art movement

Synthetism is a term used by post-Impressionist artists like Paul Gauguin, Émile Bernard and Louis Anquetin to distinguish their work from Impressionism. Earlier, Synthetism has been connected to the term Cloisonnism, and later to Symbolism. The term is derived from the French verb synthétiser.

Acquisition

The Flageolet Player on the Cliff was acquired in 1998 as part of a collection of Gauguin and his Pont-Aven coterie. Samuel Josefowitz, a Swiss collector, amassed the 17 paintings and 84 prints, worth an estimated $30 million. $20 million of that came courtesy of a challenge grant from the Lilly Endowment. The remainder was raised by the IMA, with an undisclosed amount being given by Josefowitz himself, a museum trustee. He acquired the Pont-Aven collection in the 1950s and '60s, before that period's importance in Gauguin's development was fully appreciated. [3] This particular painting hangs in the Jane H. Fortune Gallery and has the acquisition number 1998.168. [2]

Lilly Endowment Inc., headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, is one of the world's largest private philanthropic foundations and among the largest endowments in the United States. It was founded in 1937 by Josiah K. Lilly Sr. and his sons, Eli Jr. and Josiah Jr. (Joe), with an initial gift of Eli Lilly and Company stock valued at $280,000 USD. As of 2014 its total assets are worth $9.96 billion.

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References

  1. 1 2 Lee, Ellen Wardwell; Robinson, Anne (2005). Indianapolis Museum of Art: Highlights of the Collection. Indianapolis: Indianapolis Museum of Art. ISBN   0936260777.
  2. 1 2 "The Flageolet Player on the Cliff". Indianapolis Museum of Art . Retrieved 17 January 2013.
  3. Dobrzynski, Judith H. (18 Nov 1998). "Indianapolis Museum Buys 30 Gauguins From Swiss Collector". The Indianapolis Star . Retrieved 17 January 2013.