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Carmen Thyssen Collection
Paul Gauguin

In the Henhouse

ca. 1878
Oil on Cardboard.
22 x 35.5 cm
Carmen Thyssen Collection
Inv. no. (
CTB.1999.35
)
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
Through Pissarro, Gauguin was invited to participate in the Fourth Impressionist Exhibition, exhibiting a marble bust, although this work did not appear in the catalogue. In the following year, however, the artist entered the Impressionist circle through his participation in the group's Fifth exhibition, with eight of his paintings included. From this point onwards, Gauguin began to paint seriously rather than as a hobby.

The present study, executed at this time, has a surprising spontaneity and freshness that reflects his training. The scene in the hen house-black hens and a duck against a background of hay-suggests his master Pissarro's interest in country scenes. It also has more distant echoes, for example, of Greuze's famous painting The Village Bride of 1761, so highly praised by Diderot, in which the hen and her chicks are presented in the foreground as an allegory of the family. Hens reappear as a symbol of primitive life in later paintings by Gauguin executed in Martinique and Tahiti, in which man lives in the company of his animals.

Apart from the symbolic undertones in the choice of subject, the work itself is a brilliant exercise of pure painting, owing more to the influence of Manet in this regard. This influence is evident in the sober chromatic range and particularly in the strong contrast between the black of the birds and the ochre straw, reflecting Manet's example in the use of black as a colour. Gauguin is also a match for Manet in the fluid brushstrokes with which he realises the plumage and the hay stalks.

Guillermo Solana

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

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In the Henhouse. En el gallinero, c. 1878
In the Henhouse
Paul Gauguin

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In the Henhouse. En el gallinero, c. 1878
In the Henhouse
Paul Gauguin

©

Carmen Thyssen Collection

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