Study

Gauguin left Paris in the summer of 1886 to work in Brittany, where he hoped both that it would be cheaper to live and to find picturesque subject matter. This pastel has presumably been done from the model and was to serve as the basis for a vase and a painting, the Four Breton Women, which Gauguin produced back in Paris that winter. The traditional costume of the bodice and coiffe had largely been abandoned for everyday wear by the 1880s and we must assume that the model is merely supplementing her income by wearing them for the artist.