Color as Feeling

Paul Gauguin

The Yellow Christ

1889

Oil on canvas, 92.1 × 73.3 cm. Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo, NY

Three peasant women kneel at a crucifix set in open autumn fields. The museum sets the scene at the evening Angelus.

• Dark contours close each shape, and the colors inside stay flat. The scene simplifies into a few strong areas.
• The model for the Christ was a carved, painted crucifix from the 1600s, kept in the Trémalo Chapel near Pont-Aven.
• Look at the trees: their reds and oranges echo the yellow body.
• He said the yellow was meant to express the peasants' isolation and piety.
• After wartime seizure by German forces, it was bought by Buffalo in 1946.

The Angelus is a Catholic prayer said three times a day, at six in the morning, noon and six in the evening. Early owners included the painter Émile Schuffenecker and the collector Gustave Fayet, before the dealer Paul Rosenberg.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · PD-Art