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©
Carmen Thyssen Collection
Paul Gauguin

The Fire at the River Bank

1886
Oil on canvas.
60 x 38 cm
Carmen Thyssen Collection
Inv. no. (
CTB.1993.4
)
ROOM F
Level 0
Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
A B C D E F G H I J Hall Temporary exhibition rooms Access to Permanent Collection Entrance Access to Carmen Thyssen Collection Paseo del Prado Garden
A 17th and 18th Centuries. Old Masters B 19th Century. North American Landscape C 19th Century. French Naturalist Landscape D 19th Century. Impressionism E 19th Century. Monet and North American Impressionism F 19th Century. Gauguin and Postimpressionism G 19th and 20th Centuries. Neo Impressionism and its Wake H 20th Century. Early Avant-gardes I 20th Century. Between the Wars Painting. Cubism, Abstraction and Surrealism J 20th Century. North American Painting and Others • HALL
Certain pictures readily conform to the prevailing view of an artist's oeuvre at a particular moment in his career. Others-odd-ones out, so to say-strike a different note from the usually accepted view: eccentric and nonconformist. Our conception of Gauguin in Pont-Aven in 1886-his first visit to Brittany-is dominated by landscapes of the locality whose "Breton-ness" is not unduly exaggerated. An unspoilt, pastoral ambience could be mistaken for a rural idyll, especially when, in introducing figures, Gauguin presents us with picturesquely costumed young women of Pont-Aven.

This strange, almost malevolent painting has acquired a rather misleading title. The landscape element does not immediately and unequivocally proclaim a Pont-Aven provenance. A hillside declines to the bank of a river, on which the masts of two sail-boats can be discerned, with a glimpse of the far bank, and just a little sky. And rather than the quaintly costumed Bretonnes, all the actors in this enigmatic drama are male. Men whose caps, at least in three instances, suggest douaniers are gathered around mysterious fires that burn not far from the river's bank. In a sketchbook used by Gauguin in Brittany in 1886 is a sequence of five consecutive pages in which highly schematic drawings of douaniers and other male figures can be seen-as well as a skeletal compositional sketch. Several of these hastily executed figures reappear in the painting. The adapted Impressionist morphology of brushstroke and colour articulation typifies Gauguin's style during his three months' stay in Pont-Aven. In that respect, the painting qua painting conforms to our expectations. What was thematically aberrant (a cause of contraband?) turns out to be stylistically conformist.

Ronald Pickvance

19th Century19th Century - French paintingPaintingOilcanvas
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Paul Gauguin - Diez maestros de la Colección Carmen Thyssen

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The Fire at the River Bank. Hoguera junto a una ría, 1886
The Fire at the River Bank
Paul Gauguin

©

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The Fire at the River Bank. Hoguera junto a una ría, 1886
The Fire at the River Bank
Paul Gauguin

©

Carmen Thyssen Collection

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