Sketches of Children, a Woman, and Profiles (recto), Sketches of Horses and Child (verso)

Paul Gauguin · 1891/93

Medium

Graphite and blue gouache, with pen and pale yellow ink (originally purple) and watercolor (recto); graphite, over pen and pale yellow ink (originally purple) and watercolor (verso); on cream wove paper, discolored to tan (removed from a sketchbook)

Original size

32 × 21.7 cm (12 5/8 × 8 9/16 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Post-Impressionism

This intimate double-sided sketchbook page offers a rare glimpse into Paul Gauguin's working mind during one of the most transformative periods of his life. Created between 1891 and 1893, the years surrounding his first journey to Tahiti, these sketches capture Gauguin in the act of observation — children, horses, women's profiles — recorded quickly in graphite with washes of gouache and watercolor. The pale yellow ink, now faded from its original purple, adds a ghostly warmth to the composition, while the cream paper, long since deepened to tan, gives the work the feeling of something discovered rather than displayed. Working across both sides of a single sheet, Gauguin treated the sketchbook as a private laboratory, free from the demands of finished painting. The Art Institute of Chicago holds this work as part of a collection that documents Gauguin's restless visual intelligence across media — drawing, printmaking, painting, and sculpture. Our hand-painted oil reproduction translates the delicate layering of Gauguin's original marks — the soft graphite lines, the watercolor washes, the interplay of light and shadow across the figured forms — into a richly textured canvas that honours both the spontaneity and the quiet complexity of his sketchbook practice.