Tip: Gauguin's Painting Technique

Gauguin used unprimed, sackcloth-like fabrics to paint on. He valued their texture as well as their ability to produce dull, matte surfaces. When he used primed canvas, the primer was always thin, pale and absorbent giving it a similar appearance to unprimed cloth. This was the case with Christmas Night which is the work that we will use for our analysis of Gauguin's technique.

Gauguin's palette included white, Prussian blue, ultramarine blue, vermilion, veridian green, yellow ochre, alizarin red,emerald green, Naples yellow, and perhaps cadmium yellow. On occasion Gauguin added wax to his paint to stiffen it and make it even more matte.

The contours of the subject were outlined directly on the primed canvas in vermilion and dark ultramarine or Prussian blue paint. Thereafter, the paint was brushed on stiffly with little scumbling. The colors were applied wet-over-dry by dragging the brush over the rough canvas or over previous layers of dried paint, allowing color to show through. Some wet-on-wet brushwork is also apparent.

Here you can see where the dark outline of the heads has been filled-in with wet-in-wet colors. The faces are very two-dimensional compared to other parts of the painting. The pale background and snowy foreground appear to have been worked in around the figures, partially obscuring one horn and some of the original outline.

Looking closer at the foreground, you can see the texture of the canvas and the thin layers of paint with dabs of stiff paint that caught on the textured surface. The paint is generally applied relatively flat and opaque.

Lastly, you can see in the background colors that have been streaked together wet-in-wet to depict snow-covered roofs and hazy clouds. Even the clouds have been outlined in a pale blue similar to other key elements of the painting.