Louis-Dreyfus Family Collection 2019

Paul Gauguin french, 1848-1903 Little Breton Boy, c. 1888 Compressed charcoal, red chalk, and white gouache with touches of graphite 7 ⅞ by 7 ⅞ inches ( 20 by 20 cm) provenance Wildenstein & Co., Inc., New York, by 1949 ;

Mr. and Mrs. George N. Richard, New York, by 1958 ; sale, Christie’s, New York, May 13 , 1987 , lot 103 ; William Louis-Dreyfus, 1987 . exhibitions New York, Wildenstein & Co., Drawings through Four Centuries , 1949 , no. 59 ; Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago, and New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gauguin , February-May 1959 , no. 77 ; New York, The Guggenheim Museum. Gauguin and the Decorative Style , June-October 1966 , no number; New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Lure of the Exotic, Gauguin in New York Collections , 2002 , no. 14 . bibliography 5/2019 John Rewald. Gauguin Drawings . New York: Yoseloff, 1958 , no. 9 , p. 24 ; Daniel Wildenstein, Sylvie Crussard, and Chris Miller. Gauguin: A Savage in the Making: Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings (1873 – 1888) . Milano: Skira, 2002 . Vol. II, p. 413 , under no. 295 ; Ronald Pickvance. The Drawings of Gauguin . London: Hamlyn, 1970 , p. 22 , pl. 17 . Our drawing relates closely to a small oil on panel Little Breton Boy of 1888 (Private Collection, Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings (1873 – 1888) , no. 295 , illustrated). Both are likely related to a larger work of the same year titled Young Bathers of Brittany , 1888 (Kunsthalle Hamburg). In their 2002 exhibition catalogue for the Metropolitan Museum show The Lure of the Exotic, Gauguin in New York Collections , Ives and Stein suggest that the children Gauguin portrayed in his Brittany works reveal the anguish the painter suffered at leaving his own children behind in Copenhagen to pursue his artistic career.