About This Artwork

Paul Gauguin
French, 1848-1903

Breton Bather, 1886/87

Charcoal and pastel, with touches of brush and brown ink, on tan laid paper, squared in graphite, with chrome yellow residue on verso
588 x 358 mm
Signed lower left, in charcoal: "P Gauguin"; inscribed upper right, in charcoal: "Marz 87"
Gift of Mrs. Charles B. Goodspeed, 1946.292

Exhibition, Publication and Ownership Histories

Exhibition History

Kunsthalle Basel, "Paul Gauguin," July-August 1928, p. 27, cat. 168.

Berlin, Galerie Thannhauser, "Paul Gauguin," October 1928, p. 13, cat. 134.

London, The Leicester Galleries, "Exhibition of the Durrio Collection of Works by Paul Gauguin," May-June 1931, cat. 28.

Chicago, Albert Roullier Art Galleries, "An Exhibition of Original Drawings and Lithographs by Modern Masters," November 10-13, 1931 (ill.).

Chicago, Arts Club, "Loan Exhibition of Modern Paintings and Drawings from Private Collections in Chicago," November 4-25, 1938, cat. 52, as The Bathers Brittany.

New York, Wildenstein and Company, "Gauguin," April 5-May 5, 1956, p. 20, cat. 55.

The Art Institute of Chicago, "Gauguin: Paintings, Drawings, Prints, Sculpture," February 12-March 29, 1959, p. 63, cat. 74; traveled to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, April 23-May 31, 1959.

New York, Wildenstein and Company, "Master Drawings from the Art Institute of Chicago," October 17-November 30, 1963, n.p., cat. 114.

Palm Beach, Fla., Society of Four Arts, "Drawings from The Art Institute of Chicago," January 5–27, 1974, cat. 20.

Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, "The Art of Paul Gauguin," pp. 84-85, cat. 35 (ill.); traveled to The Art Institute of Chicago, September 17-December 11, 1988.

New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Art Institute of Chicago, "Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde," 2006-2007, pp. 63, 65, 367, cat. 101, fig. 63; Metropolitan Museum of Art, September 13, 2006-January 7, 2007, and The Art Institute of Chicago, February 17-May 13, 2007.

Publication History

Charles Morice, Paul Gauguin (Paris, 1919), p. 9 (ll.).

Arsene Alexandre, Paul Gauguin: Sa vie et le sens de son oeuvre (Paris, 1930), p. 13 (ill.).

John Rewald, Gauguin (New York, 1938), p. 67 (ill.).

John Rewald, Gauguin Drawings (New York, 1958), p. 24, pl. 13.

Merete Bodelsen, "Gauguin's Bathing Girl," Burlington Magazine 674:101 (May, 1959), pp. 186-88, fig. 40.

Merete Bodelsen, "The Missing Link in Gauguin's Cloisonism," Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 53 (May-June 1959), p. 338.

Jean Leymarie, Paul Gauguin: Water-colors, Pastels, and Drawings in Colour (London, 1961), pp. 3-4.

Ronald Pickvance, The Drawings of Paul Gauguin (London, 1970), p. 22, pl. 16.

Harold Joachim and Sandra Haller Olsen, French Drawings and Sketchbooks of the Nineteenth Century 2 (Chicago, 1979), p. 56-57, no. 3E2.

Douglas Druick and Peter Zegers, Paul Gauguin: Pages from the Pacific, exh. cat. (Auckland, New Zealand, 1995), p. 26, fig. 50.

Britt Salvesen, with Douglas W. Druick and Peter Kort Zegers, Gauguin (Chicago, 2001), pp. 76 and 107, no. 5 (ill.).

Ownership History

On consignment by the artist to Georges Chaudet, Paris; possibly, Ambroise Vollard (1867-1939), October 19, 1895. Francisco "Paco" Durrio (1868-1940), Paris, probably by 1906-at least 1931. Leicester Galleries, London, 1931. Albert Roullier Art Galleries, Chicago, possibly 1931 Mrs. Charles Goodspeed (née Elizabeth Fuller, later Mrs. Gilbert Chapman; 1893–1980), by 1938; given to the Art Institute, 1946.