About this artwork
In I886 Paul Gauguin was invited to design artistic pottery with the well-known ceramist Ernest Chaplet. Rather than simply decorating premade vessels, Gauguin chose to model his own unconventional forms by hand, jokingly calling them his “monstrosities.” Here the wide lip and distinctive shoulder of the vase echo the shape of the tall plant on its surface, while the protruding leaves on its sides suggest handles yet have no utilitarian function. Gauguin decorated this vase with a mix of motifs, including a goose drawn from the artist’s paintings of Brittany and a Cambodian deity copied from a photograph of a sculpture near Angkor Wat.
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Status
- On View, Gallery 241
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Department
- Painting and Sculpture of Europe
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Artist
- Paul Gauguin
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Title
- Vase in the Form of a Tropical Plant with Bird and Deity
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Place
- France (Artist's nationality:)
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Date
- 1887–1888
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Medium
- Stoneware painted with slip and gold
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Inscriptions
- Signed: PGo 60
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Dimensions
- 21.5 × 17 × 12 cm (8 1/2 × 6 1/2 × 4 1/2 in.)
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Credit Line
- Through prior purchase of the Estate of Suzette Morton Davidson, Major Acquisitions Centennial Endowment, Dellora A. Norris Funds
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Reference Number
- 2011.306
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IIIF Manifest
- https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/212301/manifest.json
Extended information about this artwork
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