Woman on a Stroll (The Little Parisienne)

Although primarily known as a painter, Gauguin was a proficient sculptor who strongly influenced modern sculpture. The versions of this statuette that he made himself document his search for a new sculptural style. One was modeled in wax, Degas's preferred medium, and the other in wood, a medium Gauguin made his own. The plaster and bronze versions in the Israel Museum were made after Gauguin's death from the wax original, which has disappeared. They demonstrate that the wax version was similar in concept to Degas's contemporary statuette of a Schoolgirl, testifying to a collaboration between the two artists. Gauguin had exhibited an exquisitely carved, academic marble portrait of his wife at the fifth Impressionist show (1880), where Degas had planned to present his Little Fourteen-year-old Dancer. During 1880, the two artists were in contact, and their statuettes demonstrate their joint attempts to make sculpture that was Impressionist in content and style. Gauguin's Woman on a Stroll was influenced by Degas's 1879 sketches, and displays Degas's interest in movement. Gauguin suggests that she is strolling by extending her left foot to touch the front corner of the base and positioning her right foot at its diagonally opposite far corner, so that the skirt is set on a diagonal that contrasts with the torso's frontality. Even the bustle at the back is skewed to stress the sway of her hips as she walks. However, the handling of the surface shows Gauguin seeking a style of his own. He delicately modeled her face, hat, hands, and the small purse she holds, but treated her dress and hooded jacket impressionistically. The smooth, flowing lines give little indication of the structure of her skirt or bustle, and her parasol blends into her skirt so completely that it is only apparent from the side and back. In contrast, the base was made of roughly hewn wood, although the wavy horizontal fold at its front echoes that of the drapery above it.This meeting of minds diverged at the 1881 Impressionist show. Degas exhibited his revolutionary Little Fourteen-year-old Dancer in colored wax, with real clothing and braided hair, while Gauguin exhibited two carvings which indicated the direction his own sculpture would take. In a wood relief, The Singer, he combined the refined modeling of his subject’s face with a roughly cut, uneven background, demonstrating the mixture of delicate and primitive woodcarving that would characterize his work. The second sculpture was the wooden version of Woman on a Stroll, which Pissarro portrayed him carving. It is much more crudely cut, with a summarily carved face, hair, hands and purse, and it exhibits sharp folds in the skirt, although the bustle is more clearly rendered. Movement is obtained by the tilt of the head and shoulders, but the feet disappear in the frontal mass of the skirt. This statuette is a forerunner of Gauguin's more "primitive" sculpture. The Israel Museum's versions thus document Gauguin's Impressionist phase, a moment of shifting values before the transition to his full-fledged sculptural style.