Mr. Loulou
Artwork by Paul Gauguin • 1890
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About this artwork - painting analysis
Paul Gauguin captures in M. Loulou all the innocence and intensity of a child's gaze through a portrait imbued with tenderness and chromatic boldness. Painted in 1890 at Pouldu in Brittany, this painting depicts Marie-Louise Loulou, the daughter of Marie Henry, the innkeeper who hosted the artist in her boarding house. The child, dressed in a gown adorned with a large decorative white collar contrasting with the dark blue of her garment, poses with touching gravity, her hands delicately crossed on her knees. Her face with delicate features, framed by brown hair, expresses a gentle yet assured presence that immediately captivates the viewer.
The composition testifies to Gauguin's synthesist genius and his definitive rejection of impressionism. Flat areas of vivid colours—emerald green, brilliant orange, soft pink—structure the space without any concern for perspectival realism. The richly ornamented armchair with decorative motifs and the stylized forms of trees or flowers in the background reveal the influence of Japanese prints and primitive art that the artist deeply admired. This bold palette and outlined contours characterize cloisonnism, a technique Gauguin develops at this time with Émile Bernard, freeing colour from any naturalistic obligation to favour symbolic and emotional expression.
This portrait belongs to a pivotal period in Gauguin's career, just before his final departure for Polynesia. The painter already explores the personal vision that will bring him fame, seeking in Breton simplicity a form of European primitivism. The decorative floral motifs that enliven the background and armchair announce the Tahitian compositions to come, where nature and human figures will merge in total decorative harmony.
Housed at the Barnes Foundation in Merion, M. Loulou masterfully illustrates how Gauguin revolutionizes portraiture by freeing it from academic conventions to make it a terrain for colourful and symbolic exploration, thus prefiguring the Fauvist audacities of the following century.
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Image license: faithful photographic reproduction of a two-dimensional public domain work of art.
