Bulletin du Musée National de Varsovie (39.1998)

she describes a painting created by the children of Camille Pissarro, whom she
liked very much.50 Elsewhere, she mentioned a painting by Maurice Denis
among the works in her possession.51 52 53 In 1978 the National Museum in Warsaw
purchased a smali composition by Edouard Yuillard, and in 1986 a gouache
by Serusier. In 1988 a painting by the latter artist was received on deposit,
known previously from the catalogues of both exhibitions of Zapolska’s
collection.

It is no longer possible today to reconstruct this outstanding collection in
its entirety; some of the items have been lost irretrievably, and there is no
documentation which could enable us to create a complete picture of it. Yet
the basie contents of the collection have been established. Three of the most
yaluable works, Girls at the Seashore in Brittany by Gauguin, Les Alycamps in
Arles by van Gogh, and Female Nudę Viewed from Behind by Seurat were sold
by Zapolska in late 1910, as mentioned previously, in the Gallery Bernheim
Jeune in Paris.

The painting by Gauguin originated in 1889 in Brittany, after the painter
had left Arles (ill. 1)G It remains unclear how the painting came into
Zapolska’s possession, but in 1894 it was already in her Paris apartment. It has
to be assumed that she received it as a present from Serusier who, wantmg to
help his friend, purchased the work from him or at auction. “This year Em
mostly doing simple farm children strolling beside the sea with their cows.
Only because I don’t like trompe l’oeil landscapes or trompe l”oeil anything
else, I try to infuse these desolate figures with the wildness that I see in them,
and which is also in me. Here in Brittany the country people have something
medieval about them; they don’t look for a moment as if they believe that Paris
really exists, or that it is 1889.”"1 Three other similar paintings by Gauguin
are known to exist, depietmg girls at the seashore in Brittany. The artist has
given the figures monumental dimensions, while the plasticity of form and the
severe expression of the whole composition points to a new direction in the
artist’s work, whose climax he would not reach until his Tahitian period. There
are obvious Japanese influences here, as throughout his stay in Brittany,

50 “[...] in my collection I have one, which I value immeasurably. It is a work painted with the
joint efforts of the grandchildren of the famous Lucjan Pissaro [sic]. Three smali children (the
oldest was three years old) painted me their portraits. Thus three children are walkmg along a path
in strange dresses, and each carries a big white flower, a kind of daisy with five petals.”
Cf. Publicystyka, op. cit., III, p. 383.

51 Listy..., op. cit., I, p. 469.

52 Oil on canvas, 92 x 73, signed and dated, presently in the collections of the National Museum
of Western Art in Tokyo. Cf. W Jaworska, “Gauguin - Ślewinski - Makowski”, Sztuka i Krytyka,
VII, 1957, pp. 184-189, mistakenly identified as a work from the collection of Wladsylaw
Slewiński; G. Wildenstein, Gauguin, Paris 1964, cat. 340; G. M. Sugana, Tout l’oeuvre peint de
Gauguin, Paris 1981, cat. 189; The Crossing Visions: European and Modern Japanese Art from the
Collections of the National Museum of Western Art and the National Museum of Modern Art,
Tokyo 1996, cat. no. 44, p. 85; The Art of Paul Gauguin, National Gallery of Art, Washington
- the Art Institute of Chicago - Grand Palais, Paris, 1988, cat. no. 91, pp. 163-164.

53 The Art ofPaul Gauguin, op. cit., p. 163.

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