Van Gogh, Gauguin and Seurat at the Met

Three pillars of Post-Impressionism in a single room

This gallery brings together Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin and Georges Seurat — three painters who, in the late 1880s, each tried in his own way to move beyond Impressionism: through pure color and emotionally charged brushwork in Van Gogh, through Symbolist flat color and Tahitian tones in Gauguin, through the scientific method of pointillism in Seurat.

1. A self-portrait painted over an already-used canvas

Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat, painted by Van Gogh in 1887 during his time in Paris, is painted on the front of a canvas whose reverse carries an earlier picture, The Potato Peeler, made in 1885 during his Dutch period in Nuenen. Short of money, Van Gogh reused this already-painted canvas rather than buying a new one — a move found on several of the roughly twenty self-portraits painted during his two years in Paris, where he used his own face as a model for lack of money to pay anyone else.

2. Two still lifes, from Paris to Arles

The Sunflowers painted in Paris in 1887 date from the same period as the self-portrait, before Van Gogh developed the more famous version of this motif the following year, in Arles.

Oleanders, painted in August 1888 in Arles, shows a majolica jug — the same one that appears in other Arles still lifes — filled with flowers Van Gogh associated with joie de vivre, capable in his view of blooming "inexhaustibly." He slips a copy of Émile Zola's novel La Joie de vivre into the composition, a deliberate echo of an earlier still life in which he had set another Zola novel against an open Bible.

3. L'Arlésienne, the portrait born of a challenge with Gauguin

L'Arlésienne: Madame Joseph-Michel Ginoux, painted by Van Gogh in 1888-1889, portrays the proprietress of the Café de la Gare in Arles, wearing the traditional costume of the women of Arles. Van Gogh based this portrait on a charcoal drawing Gauguin had made of the same sitter during a joint posing session in November 1888 — Van Gogh would go on to paint several more versions afterward, from the asylum at Saint-Rémy.

4. Seurat, the fairground and his first nocturne

Circus Sideshow (Parade de cirque), painted by Seurat in 1887-1888, shows the free parade staged outside a circus tent at the place de la Nation in Paris, during the annual Gingerbread Fair of spring 1887 — this kind of free show, performed outside the tent, was meant to draw in passersby who would then buy tickets. It is Seurat's first nocturnal painting, and the first he devoted to popular entertainment: at the 1888 Salon des Indépendants, he exhibited it alongside a daytime scene to show off the range of his pointillist technique, here dominated by violet-gray, blue-gray, orange, and green dots under artificial gaslight.

On a nearby wall, the tiny View of the Seine, painted around 1882-1883, shows Seurat at the very start of his career, in a pocket-sized format far removed from the large, carefully constructed compositions of his maturity.

5. Gauguin, the Tahitian Virgin

Ia Orana Maria ("Hail Mary"), painted by Gauguin in 1891, shows a Tahitian Virgin and Child dressed in a pareo, venerated by two women with joined hands, a yellow-winged angel hovering behind them. Painted a few months after the artist's arrival in Tahiti, the picture blends the Christian iconography he carried with him and the colors, faces, and motifs he was discovering there — Gauguin considered it the best painting he made during his time on the island.

6. Van Gogh the copyist: Millet translated rather than copied

First Steps, after Millet, painted in January 1890 during his voluntary stay at the Saint-Rémy-de-Provence asylum, belongs to a series of twenty-one copies Van Gogh painted in this period after works by Jean-François Millet, a painter he deeply admired. Van Gogh did not consider this work mere reproduction, but a "translation," the way a musician interprets another composer's score — he worked here from a photograph of Millet's original, squared it up, and transferred it to his canvas.

How much time

Look for the mention of the reverse on the label of Van Gogh's self-portrait — the hidden painting behind it can't be seen, but knowing it's there changes how you read the work.

Background on Post-Impressionism in this room — 5 minutes.
Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat (Van Gogh) — 8 minutes.
Sunflowers (Van Gogh) — 6 minutes.
Oleanders (Van Gogh) — 6 minutes.
L'Arlésienne (Van Gogh) — 7 minutes.
Circus Sideshow (Seurat) — 8 minutes.
View of the Seine (Seurat) — 4 minutes.
Ia Orana Maria (Gauguin) — 8 minutes.
First Steps, after Millet (Van Gogh) — 8 minutes.

Sources and verification

Checked against the official notices of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (metmuseum.org) and cross-checked with Wikipedia EN/FR.

Displays and room openings can change. Check the Metropolitan Museum of Art website on the day of your visit before following a route.

Continue your visit

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Five Vermeers under one roof The world’s largest Vermeer collection, and a self-portrait hidden beneath one canvas. Color against line: two rivals, one room Delacroix and Ingres, the great feud of nineteenth-century French painting.

Listen to the commentary in the gallery

This route gives you a thread to follow. In front of an artwork, CulturAll adds the audio commentary: photograph the work or its label, listen, then ask your questions.

A Van Gogh self-portrait painted over a peasant study he was too poor to discard