For Paris in the Snow, Paul Gauguin set up his easel by the window of his studio and painted the view. The studio was located on the top floor of a building at 6 rue Vercingétorix, in the Montparnasse district where he lived and worked between January 1894 and July 1895, when he left for Tahiti for the second and final time. Facing north-west, the window overlooked a courtyard through which the building was accessed from rue Vercingétorix. At the end of February 1894, just after snow had fallen, Gauguin painted part of the winter view. Dominating the composition is a large, gnarled, bare tree. Its branches can be seen in a photograph taken from the courtyard of the studio building which shows the windows of Gauguin's studio on the top floor, on the far left (). Jean de Rotonchamp even mentions the tree in his 1906 biography of Gauguin. In his description of the location, he speaks of 'a large square courtyard, sparsely shaded by a sickly tree'. To the right of the tree and the sheds in Gauguin's painting can be seen the rear of the larger buildings that flanked the nearby avenue du Maine (then still Chaussée du Maine), while to the left two figures are visible. The man wearing a blue beret and reddish-yellow jacket bears a striking resemblance to Gauguin's depiction of himself about five years earlier in Bonjour Monsieur Gauguin (); he may have wanted to include himself in the scene. In Bonjour Monsieur Gauguin, he stands opposite a passing woman with a long apron and a head covering; the old woman in Paris in the Snow has the same attributes. It appears as if Gauguin was reprising the meeting he first painted in Bonjour Monsieur Gauguin.
Unknown photographer, The courtyard and exterior of 6 rue Vercingétorix, Paris, late nineteenth century. Photo from Groom 2017, p. 66.
6 rue Vercingétorix
The serenity of this wintry perspective stood in sharp contrast to the bustling activity within the studio itself. When Gauguin moved into the studio-apartment, it was not with the intention of using it as a secluded, private sanctuary where he could work in complete tranquillity. Rather, the space was enlisted in the service of cultivating an artistic persona, which became the primary objective of Gauguin's stay in France between August 1893 and July 1895. He positioned himself as an 'exotic', 'primitive' Symbolist whose eclectic, multi-media oeuvre transcended all traditional genres and media. His painterly output dropped dramatically during this period, yielding just 22 paintings in 22 months; his priority lay instead with a wide range of activities to advance his artistic reputation. To this end, he organised an ambitious exhibition of his Tahitian paintings at Durand-Ruel, made use of his network to secure positive reviews, personally published articles in periodicals such as Mercure de France and Essais d'art libre, worked on a fictionalised account of his time in Tahiti – Noa Noa, which would eventually be published in 1901 – and experimented with various forms of 'primitive' printmaking techniques.
The epicentre of all this self-fashioning activity was the studio on the rue Vercingétorix. Gauguin fitted out the space as a true Gesamtkunstwerk of his own creativity, where he constantly welcomed guests and hosted a weekly soirée every Thursday. Among Gauguin's regular visitors were the artists Georges-Daniel de Monfreid, Francesco Durrio, József Rippl-Rónai and occasionally Edgar Degas; the art dealer Ambroise Vollard; the poets Charles Morice, Julien Leclercq and Stéphane Mallarmé; the playwrights August Strindberg and Alfred Jarry; and the musicians Maurice Ravel, Frederick Delius and Gauguin's downstairs neighbour, William Molard. On entering, Gauguin's guests passed beneath a door frame inscribed in Tahitian with the words Te Faruru ('here we make love'), finding themselves instantly overwhelmed by a sensory onslaught. The walls were painted bright yellow and densely hung with Gauguin's Tahitian canvases, recent prints and drawings, four paintings by Van Gogh and one by Cézanne, alongside a selection from Gauguin's own collection of Japanese woodcuts and reproductions of works by old and contemporary masters. Among them hung various Polynesian weapons, including clubs, axes and spears. On the floor stood wooden sculptures brought back from Tahiti, arranged alongside his own ceramic sculptures and woodcarvings. Tahitian textiles were draped at various points around the studio and a large Persian rug lay on the floor. Charles Morice later beautifully summarised the effect of the studio: 'transforming into a work of art everything he touched, he made of this studio a unique place, characteristically paradoxical – a place that signified himself.'
This eclectic mix of Gauguin's own work and sources of inspiration from all over the world formed a visual 'network' representing the totality of his artistic repertoire, with the artist himself at its centre. At his soirées, he reinforced this narrative by discussing his working methods or his travels, by reading aloud from Noa Noa, or by creating new works in front of his guests. He had also entered into a relationship with a teenage girl known only as 'Annah the Javanese'; she had moved in with Gauguin along with her pet monkey, and although today this would be viewed as problematic or exploitative behaviour on Gauguin's part, at the time it contributed to the 'exotic' allure of the studio for Gauguin and his visitors. Music was played, models posed, debates were held, drinks flowed and laughter echoed throughout this Gesamtkunstwerk – Gauguin's personal stage, a place of imagination, exoticism, eclecticism, primitivism, lyricism, desire, depth and ambiguity.
An atypical painting
Paris in the Snow does not necessarily align with all these concepts. Rather than depicting the studio interior – which was largely concerned with a fictionalised 'experience' of Gauguin's world – it looks outwards, capturing the sober, observable reality of the courtyard at 6 rue Vercingétorix. At the same time, Gauguin appears to have played with his motif imaginatively, transforming the courtyard and its surroundings into an ambiguous whole of elusive shapes, angles and vistas intersected by the erratic branches of the tree. Although Gauguin's warm tones feel welcoming, his organisation of the courtyard feels more oppressive than it would in reality have been. In a sense, the work is atypical; he had not painted such an enclosed urban space, devoid of any distant view, since 1884, when he lived and worked in Rouen. The piece also stands apart within the small group of paintings from the period between August 1893 and July 1895, when Gauguin was back in Paris. This body of work otherwise consists of imaginary reinterpretations of Tahitian motifs, self-portraits and simplified Breton landscapes in the style of 1888–89, painted during a final stay in Pont-Aven. And so, the question arises: what prompted Gauguin to create this work?
Richard Brettell proposes that it represents a homage to Gustave Caillebotte (1848–1894), who died shortly before it was made. Gauguin was supposedly referencing Caillebotte's Rooftops in the Snow (1878, Musée d'Orsay), a painting he had seen at the fourth Impressionist Exhibition in 1879, which by this time formed part of Caillebotte's bequest to the French state. However, though Caillebotte was instrumental to Gauguin in 1881, when he tried to exhibit alongside the Impressionists, after 1883 Gauguin ceased to mention the artist in his correspondence and began to distance himself more dogmatically from the tenets of Impressionism. As early as 1884, he wrote regarding Monet's works: 'I admit that they displease me completely, especially as a direction.' It is therefore unlikely that Gauguin would have paid tribute to the deceased Impressionist in this manner. In terms of subject matter and mood, the scene appears more closely aligned with the cityscapes of Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947), who similarly focused on enclosed urban settings devoid of horizons or distant views (). Nevertheless, it remains improbable that the work was a direct nod to Bonnard, given the absence of interaction between the two painters at this time. Another possibility is that Gauguin created the painting on pure impulse – a rapid study of the view from his window, inspired by the blanket of snow. Yet this scenario is equally improbable. Technical analysis of the painting – detailed below – reveals that the work is quite meticulously structured and executed. Furthermore, a Parisian cityscape stood at odds with Gauguin's artistic ambitions, particularly during this period when his focus lay elsewhere. For Gauguin, painting directly from life required a firm conceptual foundation, one that ties into the final hypothesis presented here.
Pierre Bonnard, Montmartre in the Rain, 1897, oil on paper on panel, 69.9 cm x 95 cm, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (purchased with support from the VriendenLoterij, the Rembrandt Association and the VSBfonds)
This relates directly to Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890), given that several of Gauguin's activities during the early months of 1894 – when Paris in the Snow was executed – were dedicated to his late friend. In January 1894, for instance, Gauguin published an article reflecting on their shared time at the Yellow House. He opened the piece with the following lines:
In my yellow room, sunflowers with purple centres stand out against a yellow background; their stems are bathed in a yellow pot on a yellow table. In a corner of the canvas is the painter's signature: Vincent. And the yellow sun, filtering through the yellow curtains of my room [...] Oh, yes! He loved yellow, this good Vincent.
In light of this article, it is plausible that the yellow paint Gauguin applied to his studio walls less than a month later was a deliberate homage to Van Gogh – especially since he also hung two of his friend's Parisian sunflower still lifes above his bed. Van Gogh was clearly present both in Gauguin's thoughts and his studio. On the one hand, this preoccupation likely aligned with the gradual rise in popularity of Van Gogh's work. This development might have prompted Gauguin to position himself strategically in relation to his late peer, while simultaneously hoping to profit from the sale of Van Gogh canvases in his own collection. On the other hand, there seems to have been a genuine intrinsic connection. Perhaps the choice to paint the view from his window in February 1894 – much as Van Gogh had done in Saint-Rémy – was inspired by these very musings. Gauguin worked with a palette dominated by yellow tones and colours mixed with yellow; indeed, many of the snowy areas are rendered in pale yellow rather than white. The gnarled tree in the composition is reminiscent of Van Gogh's fruit orchards and olive groves. Furthermore, in all probability Gauguin presented this canvas, alongside Women on the Banks of the River, to Jo van Gogh-Bonger (1862–1925), the widow of Vincent's brother Theo (1857–1891), a few months later. This gift was intended to compensate Jo for safekeeping and returning three Van Gogh paintings that belonged to Gauguin, one of which was an entirely yellow landscape executed in Saint-Rémy ().
Although Gauguin nowhere mentions Paris in the Snow in his correspondence with Jo van Gogh-Bonger, following John Rewald's influential article 'Theo Van Gogh, Goupil and the Impressionists' it is generally assumed that he sent it to Jo together with Women on the Banks of the River. Initially, his plan was to send only the latter work to Jo. In his announcement of the shipment, Gauguin specifically spoke of 'une étude' (a study), a description that aligns far better with the smaller Women on the Banks of the River than with Paris in the Snow. At a later moment, he must have decided to add Paris in the Snow to the parcel. While it is not impossible that the canvas reached Jo van Gogh-Bonger at a later date, it remains highly unlikely. Following his departure from Paris, Gauguin never returned to Europe; he had no further contact with Jo from Polynesia, nor did he issue any instructions from there to dispatch a shipment to Van Gogh-Bonger. It is also improbable that she acquired Paris in the Snow through other means before 1912, when she loaned the piece to an exhibition. The only work of art that she ever purchased during her lifetime was Henri Fantin-Latour's Flowers, in 1908.
Working method
In keeping with Gauguin's usual approach for paintings of this format, he established the initial layout of his composition by applying blocks of colour with very thin paint, which served to guide the subsequent build-up of the work. It is not clearly visible whether Gauguin initially executed an underdrawing before painting. This first layer of paint was largely absorbed by the jute support and the home-made ground, which Gauguin had applied only very sparingly using a mixture of chalk and a water-based binder. The ground layer was essentially intended to level out the worst irregularities of the coarsely and openly woven jute, creating a surface that allowed for easy and efficient working.
In the later stages of the painting process, Gauguin adhered strictly to his initial layout, allowing himself little room for improvisation. Consequently, the paint surface scarcely bears any pentimenti; Gauguin did not have to struggle to achieve this result. One significant alteration he did make is the blue plane at the back of the courtyard. Infrared reflectography reveals that the artist initially painted vertical lines here, likely intended to suggest a fence – the very gate that provided access from rue Vercingétorix to the courtyard where his studio building was located (). Gauguin may well have concluded that the composition's chromatic dynamism would be enhanced by replacing the fence with a solid blue plane.
The blocks of colour in this composition show little to no overlap; indeed, they are painted in such a way that they barely touch one another. Rather than a departure from Gauguin's studio practice, this was a recurring phenomenon throughout his painted oeuvre. Small sections of unpainted canvas are clearly visible to the naked eye between the fields of colour. These are revealed even more distinctly in the X-radiograph of the work, where the dark contours indicate areas of bare or thinly covered support (). Where paint is minimal or absent, X-rays pass through almost entirely unhindered, registering as black on the film. Gauguin's precisely positioned planes lock together like an ingenious puzzle, interrupted only by the gnarled silhouette of the bare tree. The trunk and principal branches were established at a relatively early stage, as evidenced by the way the adjacent paint layers have been worked around them. Conversely, the smaller twigs are a later addition, applied with a fine brush and thinned paint over the underlying layer, which must have dried quite rapidly due to the absorbent qualities of the support and ground. Snowy details in the tree were highlighted using a drier white paint. In certain passages, the upper paint layer of the colour fields was applied with a palette knife, leaving characteristic hard edges and flat surfaces devoid of brush texture. After using the palette knife, Gauguin occasionally smoothed the paint with a dry or nearly empty brush. Distinct traces of this technique can be observed in the orange-red plane at the top of the composition.
The colours that Gauguin used were largely mixed; as previously noted, yellow is a predominant component in all these background mixtures. Although subtle, this reference gains plausibility from the fact that Gauguin painted the work in an entirely yellow studio, where two canvases by Van Gogh hung on the wall. Should the figure in the lower left indeed represent a self-portrait, then it suggests that Gauguin consciously placed himself within a world alluding to Van Gogh – a poignant nod to his bond with his friend, who had died in 1890.
Joost van der Hoeven
September 2026