A Fisherman Drinking Beside His Canoe

A Fisherman Drinking Beside His Canoe by Paul Gauguin French, 1848-1903, is a potent example of the artist’s commitment to experimental printmaking during his mature period. Created in 1894, this expressive work is a wood-block print rendered in brown ink, utilizing cream wove Japanese paper, which was subsequently laid down on a secondary sheet of cream wove paper. This choice of medium and substrate reflects the growing interest among French artists in the flattened perspectives and innovative compositions found in imported Japanese ukiyo-e prints.

Gauguin, renowned for his Post-Impressionist approach and his development of Synthetism, often explored themes of indigenous life and spiritual retreat. Utilizing the inherently rough quality of the woodcut technique, the artist enhanced the primal, simplified depiction of the solitary figure and his vessel. The dense, expressive lines and areas of flat color characteristic of these early prints emphasize form over descriptive detail, a stylistic trait central to his Symbolist ideals.

Created while Gauguin was briefly residing in France between his two significant voyages to Tahiti, this 1894 piece offers an intimate, perhaps idealized, glimpse of a fisherman pausing by the water’s edge. This key example of late 19th-century French printmaking, showcasing Gauguin's radical approach to the medium, is preserved in the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. As transformative artworks like A Fisherman Drinking Beside His Canoe reach significant age, they often transition into the public domain, ensuring wide accessibility for scholarly study of Gauguin’s revolutionary work in prints.