Petit Breton arranging his shoe, or Landscape at Pont-Aven, Brittany - Paul Gauguin

A Post-Impressionist scene by Paul Gauguin, depicting a young boy in the rural Brittany countryside near Pont-Aven.

Painted during his second stay in Pont-Aven, this work captures the rural atmosphere of the Brittany region. Paul Gauguin moved away from the optical realism of his earlier period, opting for a more subjective approach to colour and form. The composition is divided between the foreground, where a young boy adjusts his wooden shoe, and the distant village nestled within the rolling fields.

The verticality of the bare trees creates a rhythmic barrier between the viewer and the background, a technique influenced by Japanese woodblock prints. Gauguin employs a palette of earthy tones, greens, and muted yellows to describe the autumnal terrain. The brushwork is deliberate, with visible strokes that define the texture of the foliage and the contours of the terrain. The figure of the boy, accompanied by a small calf, provides a sense of scale and daily life within the rural setting.

This piece reflects the artist's interest in the simplicity of Breton life, which he sought as an alternative to the industrialisation of Paris. By flattening the pictorial space and using non-naturalistic colour, Gauguin moves toward the Synthetist style that would define his later career. The work avoids the atmospheric perspective typical of traditional painting, choosing instead to emphasise the decorative qualities of the surface. The church spire in the distance serves as a marker of the village, grounding the scene in a specific geographic location while maintaining a sense of quiet isolation. This print captures the specific light and texture of the original oil painting, preserving the tonal shifts and the characteristic application of paint that define Gauguin's approach to the rural subject matter of the late nineteenth century.