Anemones and anthemics in a vase

This delicate still life captures Gauguin during a lesser-known period of his artistic development, likely from his early years before his revolutionary travels to Tahiti transformed his style. While Gauguin is celebrated for his bold, flat colors and Tahitian scenes—works like 'Mahana no atua' and 'Ia Orana Maria'—he also explored traditional European subjects like floral arrangements. In the 1880s, while still working as a stockbroker and painting in his spare time, Gauguin created still lifes that show his engagement with Impressionist techniques learned from his mentor Camille Pissarro. These works reveal an artist experimenting with color and composition before developing his distinctive Synthetist style characterized by bold outlines and simplified forms.

The choice of anemones and anthemics (likely chrysanthemums or similar decorative flowers) reflects the French tradition of flower painting, yet even in such conventional subjects, we can detect hints of Gauguin's emerging sensibility. Unlike the pure observational approach of the Impressionists, Gauguin was already moving toward a more expressive use of color and form. This painting represents a bridge between his early work as a 'Sunday painter' and the revolutionary Post-Impressionist who would later declare he sought to escape 'everything that is artificial and conventional.' Here, in the simple arrangement of flowers in a vase, we see the seeds of an artist who would ultimately reject Western artistic traditions entirely.