Paul Gauguin, Bretonnes à la barrière, 1889 (from The Volpini Suite.) Zincograph on yellow paper

Maurice Denis, Marthe au divan, ou Marthe au tablier orange, c. 1891–92. Oil on board

Odilon Redon, Profil, fond bleu, 1899
Pastel on paper

To coincide with a major exhibition devoted to Paul Gauguin following his stays in the island of Martinique and the Breton village of Pont-Aven and prior to his departure for the South Seas — Paul Gauguin: Paris, 1889 — which was inaugurated at the Cleveland Museum of Art in early October of this year and will later travel to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the Wildenstein gallery is presenting on its ground floor an exhibition of the artist’s works on paper and in the ceramic medium at that critical juncture of his career.

The Wildenstein show also features works by contemporary or near-contemporary Symbolist and Nabi artists, in particular Odilon Redon and the Nabis (Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis and Édouard Vuillard).

On display are

– a set of Gauguin’s famous Volpini Suite, reminiscences of his work in Martinique and Brittany, which was the main focus of the Cleveland show: Pastoral in Martinique, The Ants and the Grasshoppers, The Dramas of the Sea, Descent into the Maelstrom, The Pleasures of Brittany, Breton Woman Beyond a Fence, Human Misery, Old Maids of Arles and Women Washing Clothes;

– Gauguin’s pastel study for the figure of Life in his little known Life and Death (La Vie et la mort), a canvas preserved in the Musée Mahmoud Kahlil in Cairo;

– four masterpieces by Odilon Redon—a sumptuous Bouquet of Poppies and Field Flowers in oil on paper laid on wooden panel (private loan), a large pastel representing The Fall of Phaeton, a moving Self Portrait in red chalk on paper and a newly discovered pastel, Profil, fond bleu;

– a Nabi oil painting by Pierre Bonnard—Rowing on the Seine near the Bridge at Chatou, as well as a preparatory study in colored chalks for that composition and the four-color lithograph made after it;

– Édouard Vuillard’s Portrait of Cipa Godebski, a member of the Revue Blanche circle and the brother of Misia Natanson;

– two masterful oil paintings by Maurice Denis depicting his future wife and main source of inspiration Marthe Meurier, the so-called Marthe sur un divan ou Le tablier rouge (of which he later issued a color lithograph for Ambroise Vollard’s album Amou) and Marthe Sleeping at Eventide.

The Wildenstein gallery is located at 19 East 64th Street between 5th Avenue and Madison. We are open Tuesday through Friday 10–5. The exhibition will run through February 26, 2010.