Paul Gauguin, printmaker

This print shows a nude boy and woman in the waters of a beach in Brittany, on the northwest coast of France. Gauguin traveled there during the 1880s to form an artists’ colony in the rural town of Pont-Aven, which he favored for its ostensibly religious lifestyle. He reprised many of his Breton paintings as prints while organizing a small independent exhibition of his work at Volpini’s Café des Artes, on the grounds of the 1889 Universal Exposition in Paris. Published on bright yellow paper and housed in a portfolio, these prints were intended to bring public attention to Gauguin’s work.