ABSTRACT
As the winter season of 1890 opened in Paris pictorial symbolism appeared to be gaining in strength, coherence and critical recognition. The historical and theoretical relation between the synthetist-symbolist tendency in painting and symbolism in poetry is, as we shall see, complicated and often imprecise. But symbolism as a movement belongs to the next decade, and there are striking parallels between the events just outlined — from 1886 to 1891 — and those that mark the evolution of literary symbolism during the same brief period. The synthetist style as Gauguin employs it in this painting has several direct sources. Colour so as to impart, through these means alone, the 'rustic and superstitious simplicity' of the subject, which is to say that he has employed a synthetic style. Style could also, however, have its more usual meaning: a way of painting both integrated within itself and expressive of the individual artist.
