Seaweed Gatherers, Yport

Claude-Emile Schuffenecker worked closely with Paul Gauguin to form Synthetism, a style of art that broke from Impressionism in favor of flat planes of bold color and invented subjects. This drawing, which exists in two versions, is one of Schuffenecker’s most important works from the period. The other interpretation (owned by the Art Institute of Chicago) was featured in an influential 1889 exhibition organized by Gauguin and Schuffenecker at the Café Volpini on the grounds of the Universal Exposition. Both artists saw imagery of seaweed gatherers—a task undertaken by working-class people in rural French coastal towns—as exemplifying the simplicity they sought in their art.