Thyssen-Bornemisza Museo Nacional Search Ir al contenido principal

Navegación superior (EN)

About Us Support Become Friend Shop Tickets
Español
Visit Collection Exhibitions Activities Education Search
  • Visit
  • Collection
  • Exhibitions
  • Activities
  • Education

Thyssen - Navegación superior (EN)

About Us Support Become Friend Shop Tickets
Español
©
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Paul Gauguin

Street in Rouen

1884
Oil on canvas.
73 x 92 cm
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Inv. no.
552
(
1988.15
)
ROOM 33
Level 1
Permanent Collection
30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 Postpop rooms Rodin room
30 18th and 19th Centuries. Transatlantic Relations 31 19th Century. American Landscape and Environmental Awareness 32 19th Century. American Landscape and Urban Life 33 Recovering the ligth. Restoration of Waterloo Bridge, by André Derain 34 20th Century. Expressionist Landscapes 35 20th Century. Expressionist Portraits 36 20th Century. The Language of the Body 37 20th Century. Urban unrest 38 20th Century. Flowers 39 20th Century. Pioneers of abstraction 40 20th Century. Popular flavor 41 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition I 42 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition II 43 20th Century. Abstract Utopias 44 20th Century. Dada and Surrealism 45 20th Century. Interwar Realisms 46 20th Century. American Abstraction I 48 20th Century. Post-ward American Art 49 20th Century. Post-ward European Figurative Art 50 20th Century. Informalisms 51 20th Century. Homo Ludens 52 20th Century. Pop Art 53 Postpop rooms 54 Postpop rooms 55 Postpop rooms 56 Postpop rooms Rodin Exhibition room
Street in Rouen is one of the most ambitious — and largest —landscapes painted by Gauguin while living in this town in northeast France between January and November 1884. During this period, in which he ceased to be an amateur artist and began to devote himself fully to painting, Gauguin produced numerous landscapes and a few portraits and still-life pictures. Painted in an Impressionist style, with broken brushstrokes applied with very uniform touches, in which the influence of Cézanne and Pissarro is still apparent, it shows a solitary street in the outskirts of the town and not a purely country landscape as might seem at first sight. According to the recent catalogue raisonné by Daniel Wildenstein, the trees on the right of the composition could be identified as those of Rouen’s monumental cemetery located very close to the districts of Bihorel and Sapins, where the artist lived.

The perspectival treatment of paths and streets was one of the Impressionists’ chief concerns in 1884, but as Ronald Pickvance points out, “Gauguin plays a piquant variation on the potential cliché by selecting a motif with a sharp turn in the road that destroys the inevitable sweep into depth, helping to close off the deeper space.” Anchored to this vanishing point are the lofty black poplars, which provide a vertical contrast to the accentuated oblique line of the path and next to which a group of houses can be made out. According to Guillermo Solana, Gauguin uses this manner of “(not) looking at the city from the country” to emphasise the bucolic solitude of this female figure with her back to the viewer, the only human in the scene. This manner of conveying solitude through the handling of the landscape, particularly in the wide open space in the foreground, is interpreted by Sarah Whitfield as a first step towards the more expressive and Symbolist painting of the subsequent years.

The painting’s size, subject matter and style lend plausibility to the hypothesis that it is the work Gauguin showed at the eighth and last Impressionist exhibition of 1886 entitled Street in Rouen. Gauguin exhibited nineteen paintings and a small relief that had been a gift to Pissarro in 1882. The works met with considerable indifference from critics, though they received a few mentions, such as that of the critic Gustave Geffroy, who wrote that “M. Gauguin has shown nineteen works on canvas, among which there are a few still lifes but above all landscapes. He has painted willows, small pools, surrounding areas of farms, paths, and has sketched a view of Rouen. There is great consistency in most of these studies and harmony is the dominant effect.”

Paloma Alarcó
19th Centurys. XIX - Pintura europea. ImpresionismoPaintingOilcanvas
Listen
Download image Print page

More details about Street in Rouen

Imagen
Vídeo
Paul Gauguin - Diez maestros de la Colección Carmen Thyssen

Related exhibitions

Paul Gauguin Paul Gauguin
Temporary Exhibition
Gauguin and the Origin of Symbolism
Form 28 September 2004 to 9 January 2005

Related content

Video
Diez maestros de la Colección Carmen Thyssen
Con Guillermo Solana, director artístico del museo
El director artístico del museo, Guillermo Solana, ha seleccionado diez artistas destacados de la Colección Carmen Thyssen para protagonizar este ciclo de conferencias. 

Products and publications

Calle de Ruán

Calle de Ruán

17.00 €

"Masterworks from Budapest" exhibition catalogue (Spanish, Paperback)

"Masterworks from Budapest" exhibition catalogue (Spanish, Paperback)

34.00 € 15.50 €

Alex Katz (exhibition catalog. Spanish with texts in English)

Alex Katz (exhibition catalog. Spanish with texts in English)

32.00 € 30.40 €

Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Catalogue  V1 (Spanish)

Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Catalogue V1 (Spanish)

65.00 € 25.00 €

Visit online shop

More from the collection

Camille Pissarro
Camille Pissarro
The Cabbage Field, Pontoise
1873
Paul Gauguin
Paul Gauguin
In the Henhouse
ca. 1878
Paul Gauguin
Paul Gauguin
Rue Jouvenet in Rouen
1884
Paul Gauguin
Paul Gauguin
An Orchard under the Church of Bihorel
1884
  • Private and/or didactic use
  • Commercial use
Private and/or didactic use
Street in Rouen. Calle de Ruán, 1884
Street in Rouen
Paul Gauguin

©

Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Terms of Use

The exploitation rights of the images correspond to the Fundación Coleccion Thyssen-Bornemisza, F.S.P. The Fundación authorizes the downloading of high-resolution images from its website for private use, use for educational and research purposes, and other non-commercial uses.

Use for educational and research purposes is understood as the non-commercial or advertising use of images in presentations, conferences, school or university work, in classes at regulated education institutions, as well as in academic publications, with a circulation of less than 1,000 copies, provided that it is non-profit.

Non-commercial use is understood as the use of the images in a context where no profit, monetary or commercial, is generated, directly or indirectly.

Any use other than those indicated above will require the prior written authorization of the Fundación Any request for educational and research use or for non-commercial use (including academic publications), should be directed by email to the Museum Photo Library through the email address archivo.fotografico@museothyssen.org. This department manages the worldwide distribution of the images of the works of the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza and the management of their reproduction rights for those uses.

The user agrees to use the image of the website solely and exclusively for the purposes described above and in accordance with the following terms of use:

Terms of use

  • If the image is used for reproduction, the work must be reproduced in its entirety. The image may not be manipulated, deformed, modified, or altered in any way. In particular, no superposition (of images or texts) on the reproduction is allowed.
  • The reproduction of a detail or part of the work may only be made with the prior written authorization of the Fundación. In this case, the credit line must include the following mention: “detail”.
  • Any total or partial reproduction of the images authorized by the Fundación must be accompanied by the following mention: Author's name. Title, Date © Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.
  • The user will send to the Museum Photo Library of the Fundación one (1) free copy of the edition, publication or reproduction to the following address: Archivo Fotográfico, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Paseo del Prado, 8 28014 Madrid, Spain.
Download image
Commercial use
Street in Rouen. Calle de Ruán, 1884
Street in Rouen
Paul Gauguin

©

Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Terms of Use

The Photographic Archive of the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza offers sale and rental service of photographic material of all the works on its Permanent Collection.

To request images or permits for commercial use in academic or research publications, that is, catalogues of other institutions, monographs and other specialized publications, you should contact the Museum's Commercial Archive by email at the e-mail @email.

To request images or permits for other commercial or advertising uses (general publications, merchandising, exhibitions, audio-visual works, web pages, etc.), you should contact the Museum's Commercial Archive by email at the e-mail @email.

The Photo Library and the Museum's Commercial Archive manage the worldwide distribution of images of the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza works, as well as their reproduction rights. The applicable rates are calculated based on the nature and proposed use of the images, as well as the availability of the requested image.

Requests for scans or new photographs will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. Once approved, an additional fee will apply. Re-photographing a work will require a minimum of six weeks to complete.

However, photographed works are protected by copyright. Therefore, regardless of the terms of use of the photographs set out below by the Foundation, it will be necessary to obtain a license from the author or copyright holder known to the Fundacion in order to reproduce or exploit the work.

Download image
Thyssen-Bornemisza Museo Nacional

Navegación secundaria (EN)

  • #Thyssenmultimedia
  • Press
  • Corporate events
  • Tourism
  • Join our team
  • Newsletter
Instagram
Facebook
X
Youtube
TikTok
iVoox
LinkedIn

The Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza would like to thanks for the collaboration of:

Fundación Mutua Madrileña Master Card Comunidad de Madrid
©2025 Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum

Menú al pie (EN)

  • Legal terms and use of images
  • Public tenders
  • Transparency site
  • Accessibility and quality
  • Sustainability & 2030 Agenda
  • Contact
Ministry of Culture España es cultura | Spain is culture. The website promoting Spanish culture Paisaje de la Luz | Paseo del Prado y Buen Retiro. Paisaje de las Artes y las Ciencias
Certificación de Conformidad con el Esquema Nacional de Seguridad. Categoría Media. RD 311/2022