Paul Gauguin Art: Style, Subjects, Influences, Famous Paintings, Museums & Value

Self-Portrait with Halo
Paul Gauguin, Public domain,
via Wikimedia Commons

Explore the art of Paul Gauguin: his Post-Impressionist style, symbolic subjects, key influences, major museum collections, and record-breaking values. Discover why Gauguin remains one of modern art’s most influential painters.

• 1. Artistic Era and Style

  Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) is principally recognized as a Post-Impressionist, whose pioneering work evolved into a style known as Synthetism, closely related to Symbolism and Cloisonnism.

  In the late 1880s, dissatisfied with the fleeting light and fleeting realism of Impressionism, Gauguin—alongside artists like Émile Bernard and Louis Anquetin—developed Synthetism. This approach emphasized synthesizing three elements: the outward appearance of natural forms; the artist’s emotional response; and aesthetic purity in line, colour, and form Wikipedia. The flat planes, bold contouring, and vivid palettes of his works mark a clear departure from Impressionism toward more symbolic, emotionally resonant imagery.

  2. Style and Choice of Subjects

  Breton Period

  During his time in Pont-Aven, Brittany (late 1880s), Gauguin began exploring Breton religious imagery and rural life. A seminal work from this period, "Vision after the Sermon (Jacob Wrestling with the Angel)" (1888), showcases a non-naturalistic red ground, flat colors, bold lines, and a composition divided by a diagonal tree trunk—hallmarks of his emerging Synthetist style .

  Similarly, "The Yellow Christ" (1889) uses symbolic color (a yellow Christ against autumnal hues) and strong outlines, illustrating his cloaksonnist approach and symbolic myth-making .

  Tahiti and the South Seas

  In 1891, Gauguin left Europe for Tahiti, a move that transformed his palette and subjects. He immersed himself in the local environment and myths, producing lush, exotic scenes of island landscapes and Tahitian women. For instance, "Mahana no atua" (Day of the God) (1894) captures a stylized idol of Hina and dancers in a ritualistic scene, using simplified forms and dramatic color true to Post-Impressionist and symbolic traditions .

  These subjects—Tahitian life, mythology, spirituality—became central, as illustrated in "Te Fare" (The House) (1892), a landscape with vibrant tones created during his first Tahiti stay.

  3. Influences

  Gauguin synthesized diverse influences:

  • Impressionism, early in his career—he exhibited with Impressionists from 1879 to 1886 

  • Émile Bernard, who introduced him to a simplified, decorative style and cloisonnist technique.

  • Japanese woodblock prints (ukiyo-e)—providing inspiration for flat color areas, diagonal composition, and contour lines, especially visible in Vision after the Sermon .

  • His Tahiti experiences, spurred by his quest for primitive, unspoiled subjects, mythology, and a personal utopia—despite colonial realities and illness.

  4. Galleries and Current Displays

  Gauguin’s works are housed in major museums worldwide:

  • "Vision after the Sermon" resides in the Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh .

  • "The Yellow Christ" is part of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum collection .

  • "Mahana no atua" is held by the Art Institute of Chicago .

  Additionally:

  • The National Gallery of Australia recently acquired "Le toit bleu" (Farm at Le Pouldu) (1890), marking its first Gauguin in the public collection; it is currently featured in the exhibition Gauguin’s World: Tona Iho, Tona Ao 

  • The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston will host the U.S. exclusive exhibition "Gauguin in the World" (Nov 3 to Feb 16), showcasing over 150 works from his career, including pieces from the Musée d’Orsay and Louvre Abu Dhabi.

  5. Market Value and Auction Records

  Gauguin’s works command high prices in the art market:

  • The auction record is $105.7 million USD for Maternité II, sold at Christie’s New York in 2022 .

  • Average sale prices in the past 12 months: paintings around $153,645 USD, decorative art $120,252 USD .

  • The Mr-Expert valuation range estimates Gauguin paintings between €62,000 – €300,000,000, drawings €4,500 – 6,000,000, sculptures €300 – 25,000,000, prints €100 – 101,000

  • Examples of high-profile price swings:

    • Otahi (1893) was bought for about $120 million USD, but later sold for around $50 million USD, leading to notable losses .

    • Te Fare (1892) was purchased for approximately €54 million (~$85 million USD) and later sold for $25 million USD, sustaining a steep decline.

  6. Ethical Legacy and Modern Interpretations

  Gauguin’s legacy is complex and contested. While lauded for his coloristic brilliance and influence on movements like Fauvism and Expressionism, his personal life—particularly relationships with underage Tahitian girls and colonial exploitation—has prompted reevaluation and institutional debate. Museums now increasingly contextualize his work within colonial critique and ethical scrutiny 

  Structure Overview

  Here’s a breakdown of how the final essay can be structured for SEO:

  1. Introduction — Overview of Paul Gauguin's significance.

  2. Art-Historical Era — Post-Impressionism, Synthetism, Symbolism.

  3. Artistic Style and Techniques — Cloisonnist lines, symbolic composition, color usage.

  4. Thematic Subjects — Breton spirituality, Tahitian life, myth, and ritual.

  5. Influences — Impressionism, Japanese prints, Bernard, Tahitian culture.

  6. Museum Collections — Key works and their current galleries.

  7. Recent Exhibitions — NGA (Australia), MFAH (Houston).

  8. Art Market Value — Auction records, valuation ranges, market fluctuations.

  9. Legacy and Ethical Discourse — Academic and museum reevaluation.

  10. Conclusion — Gauguin's enduring impact and evolving reception.The Art of Paul Gauguin: Style, Era, Subjects, Influences, Museum Collections, and Market Value

  Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) stands at the crux of late-19th-century painting, a restless innovator whose search for spiritual intensity and simplified form helped propel Western art past Impressionism and into the bolder color, flattened space, and symbolic content of the modern era. Today, his canvases—from the Breton visions of the late 1880s to the Tahitian and Marquesan works of the 1890s—anchor major museum collections and command headline-grabbing prices on the art market. This comprehensive guide explores Gauguin’s painting style, the art-historical movements he shaped, the subjects that obsessed him, the artists and cultures that influenced him, where to see his works now, and how his paintings are valued.

  Gauguin’s Place in Art History: Post-Impressionism, Symbolism, Pont-Aven, and the Birth of Synthetism

  Gauguin is typically grouped with the Post-Impressionists—a constellation that includes Vincent van Gogh, Georges Seurat, and Paul Cézanne—artists who extended Impressionism’s chromatic daring while rejecting its naturalism and atmospheric effects in favor of structure, expression, and personal vision. Encyclopaedia Britannica summarizes the period by noting how these artists developed more individual approaches to color, brushwork, and subject matter, moving beyond direct observation to cultivate inner experience and formal order. 

  Within that broader arc, Gauguin helped crystalize two intertwined tendencies: Cloisonnism and Synthetism. Cloisonnism—first named in 1888—describes compositions built from flat zones of color bounded by dark contours (akin to the metal partitions in cloisonné enamel). Works like The Yellow Christ (1889) became exemplars of this style, with its simplified silhouettes and emphatic outlines.  Synthetism, closely allied and often preferred by Gauguin, sought to synthesize three elements in a painting: the outward appearance of things, the artist’s feelings about the subject, and purely aesthetic considerations of line, color, and form. As the Tate’s glossary notes, this symbolic mode—developed with Émile Bernard and others in Pont-Aven—privileged decorative flatness and subjective meaning over naturalistic description. 

  In Pont-Aven (Brittany) during 1888–89, Gauguin’s exchange with Émile Bernard catalyzed a dramatic shift away from Impressionist opticality toward stylization and symbol. The local costumes, Catholic rituals, and rugged Breton landscape suited his appetite for what he saw as an austere, “primitive” spirituality—an appetite that would intensify in Polynesia. Smarthistory underscores how the Pont-Aven circle married “primitivist” themes with synthetist design to generate images that looked and felt radically new. 

  What Gauguin’s Painting Looks Like: Color Fields, Dark Contours, and Symbolic Design

  Gauguin’s mature canvases are immediately recognizable:

  • Flattened planes of saturated color replace modeling and atmospheric perspective; fields of ochre, vermilion, emerald, and indigo sit side-by-side in audacious harmonies.

  • Heavy outlines corral these zones (the cloisonné effect), clarifying shape and bestowing a decorative logic across the surface.

  • Abbreviated forms and patterned surfaces simplify nature into emblematic signs—trees arc like arabesques; rocks, sarongs, and skin become color-blocks.

  • Symbolic content displaces anecdotal realism; animals, idols, and gestures accrue layered meaning.

  This language coalesces in Vision of the Sermon (Jacob Wrestling with the Angel) (1888), a Pont-Aven keystone in the Scottish National Gallery. Breton women—rendered as flattened silhouettes—contemplate a crimson field where Jacob wrestles the angel: a religious “vision” that collapses time and space into a single symbolic plane. In The Yellow Christ (1889), a luminous, lemon-hued crucified Christ floats within an autumnal Breton landscape while local women pray below—an image that fuses folk devotion, stylistic abstraction, and modern color theory into one cloisonnist icon. 

  Gauguin’s Preferred Subjects: From Brittany’s Piety to Tahiti’s Myth

  Brittany (1886–1891): Peasants, Piety, and the Visionary Landscape

  In Brittany, Gauguin cultivated religious scenes inflected by local customs (The Yellow Christ; The Green Christ), and peasant life distilled into hieratic rhythms. These canvases also often insert a supernatural or visionary register: the biblical appears amid Breton reality as if painted on the same decorative fabric, conflating material and spiritual worlds. 

  Tahiti and the Marquesas (1891–1903): Idols, Myths, and Human Archetypes

  Gauguin departed for Tahiti in 1891, lured by a romanticized ideal of an unspoiled paradise (an image he partly absorbed via Pierre Loti’s novel Le Mariage de Loti). He discovered instead a culture already altered by French colonialism. Nevertheless, he immersed himself in what he believed were “authentic” Polynesian motifs and stories, translating them into a personal mythography populated by goddesses, totems, and scenes of daily life. 

  In Tahiti he painted idols and deities (Hina tefatou/The Moon and the Earth), ritual or allegorical scenes (Mahana no atua/Day of the God), pastoral and intimate moments (Fatata te miti/By the Sea), and philosophical summations (the monumental Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? of 1897–98). These works combine local flora, textiles, and postures with invented iconography; they oscillate between ethnographic detail and a kind of dream language. Locations today confirm the international spread of these paintings across major museums (see “Where to See Gauguin’s Art Today,” below). 

  Portraiture and the Female Figure

  Gauguin’s images of Tahitian women—reclining, seated, or standing in frieze-like profiles—compress the European odalisque tradition, Polynesian presence, and the artist’s projections into charged images that can be as unsettling as they are beautiful. Paintings such as Nevermore (O Taiti) (1897), now at the Courtauld Gallery in London, stage desire alongside disquiet (note the raven and the alert, anxious gaze), revealing Gauguin’s fascination with myth and the unconscious. 

  A note on ethics and reception: Gauguin’s personal conduct in Polynesia—including relationships with underage girls and primitivizing attitudes—has been the subject of intense critical reassessment. Many museums now present his art alongside commentary that foregrounds colonial dynamics and the harm embedded in his biography. This context is essential for a full, responsible engagement with his work.

  Who Influenced Gauguin (and Whom He Influenced): Bernard, Japonisme, and the Road to Modernism

  Émile Bernard and the Pont-Aven Circle

  Bernard’s simplified shapes, bold contours, and taste for Japanese woodcut aesthetics were crucial touchstones for Gauguin. The pair’s push-and-pull in 1888 fueled the synthetist method and ushered in a suite of landmark canvases. Modern overviews by the Tate and academic sources trace how Synthetism emerged from this close dialogue and the 1889 “Volpini Exhibition” (Gauguin’s alternative Salon). 

  Japonisme and the Print Aesthetic

  Like Degas and Van Gogh, Gauguin absorbed lessons from Japanese ukiyo-e: strong contours, flattened color, diagonal cropping, and decorative pattern. The Metropolitan Museum’s studies of Japonisme show how French artists mined Hokusai and Hiroshige for formal strategies that helped liberate Western painting from Renaissance space—an influence one sees across Gauguin’s Breton and Tahitian periods. 

  Symbolism and the Nabis

  Gauguin’s insistence on the primacy of feeling, idea, and design over naturalistic resemblance resonated with Symbolist painters and the Nabi circle (Maurice Denis, Paul Sérusier). Denis’s famous dictum—“a picture…is essentially a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order”—mirrors Gauguin’s aesthetics and his anti-illusionistic creed. 

  Impact on the 20th Century

  His fusion of myth, color, and structure influenced artists from Matisse to the German Expressionists, and it helped normalize the idea that an artist’s inner vision could reorder reality on the canvas—a central tenet of modern art. Britannica emphasizes Gauguin’s outsized legacy and the difficulty of pigeonholing his later work into neat stylistic compartments, a measure of its originality. 

  Where to See Gauguin’s Art Today: Key Museums and Masterpieces

  Gauguin’s paintings are widely distributed, but several institutions hold especially important works. Here are major destinations—organized by city—with signature pieces and verified collection pages:

  Paris

  • Musée d’Orsay — Houses a rich trove of Gauguin’s Breton and Tahitian canvases, including Arearea (Joyousness) (1892), a touchstone of his first Tahitian period; the museum’s catalogue notes its contentious 1893 Paris showing and Gauguin’s own esteem for the painting. 

  London

  • The Courtauld Gallery — Nevermore (O Taiti) (1897), an emblematic Tahitian interior where eroticism meets unease; the Courtauld’s online entry explores its unsettling symbolism and colonial context. 

  Edinburgh

  • Scottish National Gallery — Vision of the Sermon (Jacob Wrestling with the Angel) (1888), the Pont-Aven milestone of Synthetism and Cloisonnism noted above. National Galleries of Scotland

  Boston

  • Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) — Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (1897–98), Gauguin’s monumental summa painted in Tahiti, now a centerpiece of the MFA’s collection. 

  New York

  • The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) — The Seed of the Areoi (Te aa no areois) (1892) and The Moon and the Earth (Hina tefatou) (1893) are among Gauguins in MoMA’s collection, reflecting the museum’s deep holdings in Post-Impressionism and Symbolism. 

  Washington, D.C.

  • National Gallery of Art (NGA) — Fatata te miti (By the Sea) (1892), a radiant coastal scene from Gauguin’s first Tahitian stay.

  Chicago

  • Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) — Mahana no atua (Day of the God) (1894), a pivotal synthesis of Tahitian motif and decorative abstraction. 

  Buffalo

  • Buffalo AKG Art Museum — Le Christ jaune (The Yellow Christ) (1889), the iconic cloisonnist Breton crucifixion. Basel

  • Kunstmuseum Basel — Ta Matete (We Shall Not Go to the Market Today) (1892), a major Tahitian frieze-like composition rendered in emphatic color blocks. 

  These are only highlights; Gauguin’s works also feature in Paris’s Musée d’Orsay’s companion institutions, London’s Tate and National Gallery (drawings/prints and loans), European and U.S. museums, and private collections. Always check collection sites for current display status.

  Signature Works in Focus

  Vision of the Sermon (Jacob Wrestling with the Angel) (1888)

  Painted in Brittany, this canvas distills Synthetism: Breton women in starched coifs gaze upon a red ground where Jacob and the angel grapple. The result is both devout and radical—story, vision, and design compressed into a decorative icon. (Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh.) 

  Le Christ jaune (The Yellow Christ) (1889)

  Gauguin transposes a 17th-century crucifix from a local chapel into a modern devotional scene, bathing Christ’s body in mustard yellow and anchoring the composition with firm contours and autumnal fields. (Buffalo AKG Art Museum.) 

  Arearea (Joyousness) (1892)

  Among the first Tahitian canvases Gauguin exhibited back in Paris, Arearea sparked debate but embodied his belief in the expressive, decorative power of simplified color and line—note the famous red dog. (Musée d’Orsay, Paris.) 

  Fatata te miti (By the Sea) (1892)

  A sun-struck coastal scene with two women foregrounded against aquamarine shallows and ochre sands, its shapes clipped and patterned like cutouts. (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.) 

  Mahana no atua (Day of the God) (1894)

  A ritual figure presides over a shallow stage where dancers and bathers become signs in a decorative matrix, culminating in a trio of reclining nudes that slide toward pure abstraction. (Art Institute of Chicago.) 

  Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (1897–98)

  Gauguin’s vast philosophical panorama—painted in Tahiti after personal crises—runs right-to-left from childhood to old age, folding myth and fate into a frieze of emblematic scenes. It is the grand statement of his career. (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.) 

  Nevermore (O Taiti) (1897)

  An intimate interior: a reclining young woman turns her head as a raven perches behind—the title nods to Poe. Sensuous color meets a sinister undertow. (The Courtauld Gallery, London.) 

  Materials, Methods, and Printmaking Experiments

  While best known as a painter, Gauguin was an inventive printmaker and sculptor. He experimented with transfer drawings, monotypes, and unusual print processes, sometimes confounding conservators attempting to parse his techniques today. Britannica highlights this experimental streak as part of his legacy—an insistence on trying materials in idiosyncratic ways to achieve new expressive effects. 

  How to Recognize Gauguin’s Influences in the Paintings

  • Japanese Prints (Ukiyo-e/Japonisme): Flat color, outline, and asymmetric framing; the aesthetic “grammar” behind Cloisonnism and Synthetism. (Metropolitan Museum studies on Japonisme.) 

  • Breton Folk Culture: Black-and-white coifs, processions, chapels, and carved crucifixes feed his Breton iconography, transforming ethnographic detail into modern symbol. (The Yellow Christ entry and museum materials.)

  • Polynesian Myth and Motif: Idols, tattoos, flora, sarongs, and gestures—filtered through Gauguin’s imagination and the colonial lens—animate his Tahitian narratives. (MFA Boston on Where Do We Come From? and MoMA holdings.)

  Gauguin’s Market Value: Records, Private Sales, and the “Blue-Chip” Status

  Gauguin has long been a bellwether of the high end of the art market. Two benchmarks illustrate his valuation:

  1. Auction Record: Maternité II (1899) sold for $105.7 million (including fees) at Christie’s New York on November 9, 2022, in the Paul G. Allen Collection sale—the most expensive Gauguin ever at auction. The Art Newspaper’s coverage cites the $92 million hammer (before fees) and contextualizes the evening’s record-setting totals. 

  2. Reported Private Sale Peak: Nafea Faa Ipoipo? (When Will You Marry?) (1892) reportedly sold privately in 2015 for around $300 million to a Qatari buyer, according to reputable press at the time; although private-sale numbers are not public filings, multiple outlets (e.g., The Guardian) reported the figure, and later legal filings referenced $210 million in commission disputes. These reports cemented Gauguin’s reputation among the most expensive artists in history. 

  The 2022 Paul G. Allen auction (the first $1.5-billion art sale) further underscored Gauguin’s “blue-chip” status, with five artists—including Gauguin—crossing the $100-million threshold in a single evening. 

  What drives Gauguin’s prices?

  • Rarity at the top end: Monumental, museum-quality Breton or Tahitian canvases seldom appear on the market; when they do, competition is fierce.

  • Art-historical centrality: His direct role in the birth of Synthetism/Symbolism and his influence on modernism make major works trophy-level acquisitions.

  • Provenance and exhibition history: Works tied to famous collections (e.g., Ambroise Vollard, major exhibitions) carry a premium.

  • Condition and period: First-rate Pont-Aven (1888–89) and early Tahitian (1891–93) works, or landmark statements (1897–98), are especially coveted.