top of page

Painting table analysis

GAUGUIN - The woman with the fruit - 1893

I offer you a kind of composition reconstruction according to my personal vision. Attention, I have no pretension to say that I found how Gauguin would have composed this work. Far from there ! This proposition is just a personal assumption in an attempt to approach the Gauguin method. By observing other tables of its composition, I could observe that it would only occasionally use one or two harmonic grids and parallel obliques.

Gauguin Femme fruit 1893.jpg
Capture d’écran 2019-12-06 à 18.37.47.pn

A first step could be to draw one or two harmonic grids: here the grid of the medians, and that of the ½ diagonals

Capture d’écran 2019-12-06 à 18.36.40.pn

To balance this central mass, two figures are placed with their eyes on the horizontal medians

Gauguin - Woman with fruit - Composition with grid and obliques

A dynamic is given by the oblique of the heads of the women on the left and the arm of the woman in the center. A series of parallels will give vigor and rhythm.

Capture d’écran 2019-12-06 à 18.37.12.pn

The median can be used to set up the theme of the table; the woman with her navel and the fruit just on the median.

Capture d’écran 2019-12-06 à 18.35.55.pn

Still looking for balance, a third character comes to rest on this same horizontal

Capture d’écran 2019-12-06 à 18.34.09.pn

Again for the search for balance a second series of oblique parallels to the second roof.

Capture d’écran 2019-12-06 à 13.42.26.pn

Finally, the other elements of the decoration composed in such a way as not to make the lines of composition too blatant for the eye.

bottom of page