The Yellow Christ

The Yellow Christ

Artist	Paul Gauguin
Year	1889
Medium	Oil on canvas
Dimensions	91.1 cm × 73.4 cm (35.9 in × 28.9 in)
Location	Albright-Knox Art Gallery

The Yellow Christ (in French: Le Christ jaune) is a painting executed by Paul Gauguin in autumn 1889 in Pont-Aven. Together with The Green Christ, it is considered to be one of the key works of Symbolism in painting.

The Crucifix of Trémalo, Pont-Aven, an anonymous wood sculpture, 189 x 133 cm

Gauguin first visited Pont-Aven in 1886. He returned to the village in early 1888 to stay until mid-October, when he left to join Vincent van Gogh in Arles, for little more than two months. Early in 1889, Gauguin was back to Pont-Aven to stay there until spring 1890. It was only for a short visit in summer 1889 to Paris to see the Exposition universelle and to arrange the Volpini Exhibition that Gauguin interrupted this sojourn. Soon after his return to Pont-Aven he painted The Yellow Christ:

The Yellow Christ is a symbolic piece that shows the crucifixion of Christ taking place in nineteenth-century northern France as Breton women are gathered in prayer. Gauguin relies heavily on bold lines to define his figures and reserves shading only for the women. The autumn palette of yellow, red and green in the landscape echoes the dominant yellow in the figure of Christ. The bold outlines and flatness of the forms in this painting are typical of the cloisonnist style.

A study for The Yellow Christ in pencil is preserved in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, and a version in watercolor is in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, gift of Elizabeth F. Chapman.^[1]

Self-portrait with the Yellow Christ (Autoportrait au Christ jaune), 1890-1891, by Paul Gauguin, oil on canvas, 38 x 46 cm, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, depicts the painting reversed, "mirrored".

Notes

↑ "Art Institute of Chicago". Retrieved 19 July 2014.

References

Gauguin et le Christ jaune, Musée de Pont-Aven, (24 June - 2 October) 2000 ISBN 2-910128-21-0

Paul Gauguin

Paintings	Still Life with Profile of Laval (1886) Vision after the Sermon (1888) The Painter of Sunflowers (1888) Landscape near Arles (1888) The Flageolet Player on the Cliff (1889) The Yellow Christ (1889) The Green Christ (1889) Self-Portrait with Halo and Snake (1889) Still Life with Head-Shaped Vase and Japanese Woodcut (1889) Tahitian Women on the Beach (1891) Vahine no te vi (1892) Fatata te Miti (By the Sea) (1892) Arearea (1892) Spirit of the Dead Watching (1892) When Will You Marry? (1892) Merahi metua no Tehamana (1893) Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (1897/1898) Two Tahitian Women (1899)

Other works	Jug in the Form of a Head, Self-Portrait (1889) Soyez amoureuses vous serez heureuses (wood panel, 1889) Oviri (ceramic sculpture, 1895)

Exhibitions	Les XX, 1889 The Volpini Exhibition, 1889

Public collections	Courtauld Institute of Art Hermitage Museum Musée d'Orsay Museum Folkwang Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek Pushkin Museum

Friends and family	Émile Bernard Vincent van Gogh Meijer de Haan Charles Laval George-Daniel de Monfreid Camille Pissarro Émile Schuffenecker Flora Tristan (grandmother)

Art dealers	Theo van Gogh Ambroise Vollard

Commons Wikibooks Wikiquote

Authority control	BNF: cb13564438f (data)

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