Gauguin, seeking a simpler and more frugal…

Gauguin, seeking a simpler and more frugal life, makes a trip to Pont-Aven in the Brittany region of France, where eighteen-year-old painter Émile Bernard goes also, in the summer of 1886.

Bernard, whose earlier works had been typically Impressionist snapshots of real life, full of sparkling color and light, now breaks with the movement to apply a more disciplined, formal technique to portraits and figure paintings, particularly of women.

Bernard meets Gauguin and under the older painter's influence begins to theorize a style of painting bold forms separated by dark contours.

He also does sculpture and woodcuts and designs furniture and tapestries.

Gauguin and Bernard are the first to reject Impressionist and pointillist techniques in favor of new methods, employing an overall simplification, a highly expressive use of color, and an intensely spiritual approach to their subject matter.

Paul Signac, having noticed some divisionist-style paintings by Bernard, goes to visit him, hoping to enlist another disciple for Seurat.

But he succeeds only in alienating Bernard, who becomes a violent opponent both of Signac and of divisionism.

Gauguin, meanwhile, completes such works as Still Life with Profile of Laval (1886, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Samuel Josefowitz Collection of the School of Pont-Aven), Young Breton Bathers (1886, Hiroshima Museum of Art), Four Breton Women (1886, Neue Pinakothek, Munich), The Breton Shepherdess (1886, Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne (Tyne and Wear Museums)), Seascape (1886; Güteborgs Konstmuseum, Güteborg, Sweden), Moss Roses in a Basket (1886, Arthur Ross Gallery at the University of Pennsylvania) and Washerwomen at Pont-Aven (1886; Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France).