Paul Gauguin

Madame Tanguy, Paris (sale: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 2nd June 1894, lot 25)
Alfred Lampe, Paris (acquired probably after 1918)
Alfred Lampe, Paris (by descent from the above, his father, sale: Maître Blache, Hôtel Rameau, Versailles, 8th June 1977, lot 89)
Purchased at the above sale by the present owner

Merete Bodelsen, 'Early Impressionist Sales 1874-1894', The Burlington Magazine, June 1968, p. 347-348
Daniel Wildenstein, Gauguin, Premier itinéraire d'un sauvage, catalogue de l'œuvre peint (1873-1888), Paris, 2001, vol. I, no. 134, illustrated in colour p. 151 

The canvas is not lined and there are no traces of retouching visible under UV light. This work is in very good original condition.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

In November 1883, Paul Gauguin decided to move with his family to Rouen, where the cost of living was much lower than in Paris. The Impressionist movement was beginning to break apart with Paul Cézanne developing his ideas concerning the expression of form through colour, Camille Pissarro about to take up the Neo-Impressionist theories of Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir looking to Classical art for inspiration. Gauguin’s move to Rouen provided a distance that allowed him, too, to develop the beginnings of the philosophical direction that would lead him towards his mature Post-Impressionist style.

Discussions of the paintings that Gauguin executed during his time in Rouen, from January to November 1884, inevitably lead to comparisons with the works he painted during the summer of 1883, when he set up his easel alongside Pissarro in Osny, painting en plein air in order to explore the challenges of capturing the landscape in the changing light of day. ‘Superficially the [Rouen] pictures still maintain a fragmented brush stroke similar to that which Pissarro used in the early eighties, but the colour is no longer Impressionist. The palette is dark and rich. There is little differentiation within objects of light and shadow, and often the most intense colours sparkle like jewels against the dark green velvet of the foliage. Gauguin was not yet using the massive areas of colour that he was to employ in a few years in the pictures he would paint in Brittany and Tahiti, but he was already thinking in terms of sumptuous colour rather than the effects of light’ (quoted in From El Greco to Pollock, Early and Late Works by European and American Artists (exhibition catalogue), Baltimore Museum of Art, 1968, p. 86).

Gauguin’s transition owed much to the significant influence of Cézanne, with whom he had spent time in Pontoise in 1881, and several of whose paintings he owned. As he wrote to his friend and fellow painter Claude-Émile Schuffenecker in January 1885, ‘Cézanne […] shows a liking in his forms for the mystery and deep calm of a man who has lain down to dream; his colour is solemn like the character of the Orientals; as man of the Midi he spends entire days at the top of the mountains reading Virgil and looking at the sky… Like Virgil, who has several meanings, and whom one can interpret as one wishes, so the literature of his paintings has the character of a parable that works on two levels; his backgrounds are as much fantasy as reality’ (quoted in Gauguin and Impressionism (exhibition catalogue), Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, 2005, pp. 230-231). With its rich russet and green tones applied in quick, diagonal and horizontal brushstrokes, Le Poulailler brilliantly illustrates the power that Gauguin found in Cézanne’s technique and his ability to translate that into his own pictorial vocabulary. The uncomplicated subject matter of a rural landscape, with its historical foundation in the Barbizon school and further explored by the Impressionists, allowed Gauguin the platform to fully explore the possibilities of modern techniques in painting to superb effect.