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Vision after the Sermon (Jacob Wrestling with the Angel)
Paul Gauguin · Post-Impressionism & Neo-Impressionism
- Artist
- Paul Gauguin (1848–1903)
- Date
- 1888
- Dimensions
- 72.2 x 91 cm
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Location
- Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Vision after the Sermon shows a group of Breton women in white bonnets who, after hearing a sermon in church, see before them the Bible story of Jacob wrestling with an angel. Gauguin painted it at Pont-Aven in Brittany.
A closer look
A diagonal tree trunk divides the canvas: on one side the praying women and a priest, on the other the struggle of Jacob and the golden-winged angel, set in a field of flat, intense red. The colour is unnatural on purpose, signalling that we are in the world of the imagination, not reality. Gauguin used bold outlines and flat areas of colour, inspired by Japanese prints and medieval stained glass. The painting marked his break with Impressionism and the birth of Synthetism.
History of the painting
After the priest at Nizon turned the painting down, it went back to Paris with Gauguin and passed through several French collections. In 1925 the National Galleries of Scotland bought it, at a time when few public museums anywhere owned a Gauguin, and it became one of the first major works of Post-Impressionism in a British public collection.
More by Paul Gauguin
In this gallery
When Will You Marry? (Nafea Faa Ipoipo)
Arearea (Joyfulness)
Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?
The Yellow Christ
Spirit of the Dead Watching (Manaò tupapaú)