Object number1994.2.1

Pots en Grès Chaplet

Datec. 1888

Artist Paul Gauguin (French, 1848-1903)

CultureFrench

MediumGouache, watercolor, and charcoal on Japanese paper

DimensionsImage: 11 13/16 x 15 3/4 in. (30 x 40 cm)
Framed: 20 1/2 x 24 7/16 x 1 15/16 in. (52 x 62 x 5 cm)

Credit LineBequest of Sarah Hamlin Stern, class of 1938, in memory of her husband, Henry Root Stern, Jr.

On View

Not on view

Period19th c

Classification(s)

Drawings and Watercolors

Terms

SignedOn recto, signed lower right in charcoal: P Gauguin

InscribedOn recto, by artist, lower right in charcoal: Pots en Grès. Chaplet.

Vassar Exhibitions

From Manet to Picasso: Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Prints & Drawings

An Era of Opportunity: Three Decades of Acquisitions

Exhibition HistoryKnoedler Art Gallery, New York, NY, February 12 - March 20, 1959;

Metropolitan Museum of Art, April 22 - May 30, 1959;

From Manet to Picasso: Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Prints & Drawings, Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY, April 6 - June 10, 2001;

Sioux City Art Center, Sioux City, IA, October 31 - December 9, 2001;

Gauguin in New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, June 18 - October 20, 2002;

Becoming Gauguin: The Volpini Suite, 1889, Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio, October 4, 2009 - January 18, 2010; Van Gogh Museum, Postbus, Amsterdam, February 19, 2010 - June 6, 2010;

Gauguin: Artist as Alchemist, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, June 25, 2017 - January 21, 2018

Label TextGauguin, one of the most influential of French Post-Impressionist artists, explored a variety of artistic media in addition to drawing and painting. These included woodcuts, carved wooden sculpture, and ceramics. Through the printmaker Félix Bracquemond, Gauguin was introduced in 1886 to the ceramicist Ernest Chaplet, whose stoneware technique (grès), previously understood in France only in a utilitarian sense, was considered artistically highly evolved. Gauguin was taught how to work in this material and over the next ten years produced around one hundred objects, including the two vases that appear in this drawing — the Leda Vase (represented twice) and the Portrait Vase in Unglazed Stoneware of a Woman Wearing a Snake-Belt. Both vases survive and are in private collections. This medium allowed Gauguin to make works of seeming utilitarian art, thus emphasizing and incarnating the cross-cultural references that most interested him.

DescriptionDepiction of three separate ceramic busts, the first two being the same ceramic but from different angles. The first and second ceramic have a handle near the back creating a connection shaped like the number 3 while the last ceramic has a linear handle connection. Each depicts a figure with short cropped hair.

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email loebcollections@vassar.edu