The Yellow Christ
A wooden crucifix from the chapel of Trémalo near Pont-Aven, set against the real hills and fields of Brittany.
Chapelle de Trémalo, Pont-Aven
The painting shows a real, identified place that you can find today. The exact spot the artist worked from is not necessarily known.
The Yellow Christ — at a glance
- Artist
- Paul Gauguin (1848–1903)
- Year
- 1889
- Movement
- Symbolism / Cloisonnism (Pont-Aven School)
- Place
- Chapel of Trémalo and the fields around Pont-Aven, Brittany, France
- Viewpoint
- A real chapel crucifix moved outdoors into the real Pont-Aven landscape
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Now at
- Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York
Overview
The Yellow Christ is one of the key works of Paul Gauguin's time in Brittany, painted in 1889. It shows a bright yellow figure of the crucified Christ standing against an autumn landscape, with three Breton women in white caps seated around the foot of the cross. It is oil on canvas and hangs in the Buffalo AKG Art Museum in Buffalo, New York.
It is a founding picture of Symbolism and of the flat, outlined style Gauguin and his friends developed at Pont-Aven.
Where was The Yellow Christ painted?
Museum interpretation The crucifix is a real object: a polychrome wooden Christ, probably seventeenth-century, that hangs in the small chapel of Trémalo, in the woods just above the village of Pont-Aven in southern Brittany. The chapel and the crucifix are still there and can be visited. Gauguin moved the figure out of doors and set it against the sloping fields, hedged plots and low hills around Pont-Aven, with a distant village and trees turning yellow and red.
How we know
- Depicts the real polychrome wooden crucifix inside the Chapelle de Trémalo near Pont-Aven; the listed subject 'crucifixion of Jesus' is the biblical episode.
What is in the painting?
The cross fills the height of the canvas, the body a flat, luminous yellow with dark outlines. Three Breton peasant women in traditional black dress and white coifs sit or kneel on the grass around it, as if at a wayside calvary. Behind, the land drops away in patches of yellow and green to a cluster of houses and a line of autumn trees; a small figure climbs a wall at the right.
Look closely
The wooden Christ
Flat, glowing yellow with hard dark outlines — the shape taken from the real Trémalo crucifix.
The three Breton women
In black dress and white coifs, seated in an arc at the foot of the cross as if at a wayside calvary.
The tilted fields
The land rises up the canvas in patches of yellow and green rather than receding.
The figure on the wall
A small peasant climbs a stone wall at the right, leaving the scene.
The autumn trees
A line of red-brown trees and a few houses close the view behind the cross.
Analysis
Composition & perspective
The cross is pulled flat against the picture surface; the landscape rises behind it like a tapestry rather than receding.
Scholarship Gauguin flattens the space: the fields tilt up instead of going back, the colours are laid in broad unshaded areas, and everything is held by dark contours. The cross divides the canvas centrally, with the seated women grouped in an arc at its base.
Colour and light
A single strong yellow for the whole body of Christ, keyed to the yellows of the autumn fields.
Scholarship The colour is symbolic rather than observed: Christ is painted the yellow of the ripe and dying year around him, tying the crucifixion to the Breton landscape and its harvest. The women's black and white and the red-brown trees set the yellow off.
Meaning and interpretation
Interpretations differ. What the artist documented, what museums and scholars propose, and later or speculative theories are marked and kept separate.
Faith in the landscape
The picture is read as an image of simple, rooted Breton piety: the women pray at the foot of Christ as they would at a real roadside calvary, and Gauguin, seeking what he saw as an unspoiled religious culture, paints their faith as part of the land.
Gauguin and the crucifix
Later the same year Gauguin used the same yellow Christ as a backdrop in a self-portrait, which has led to much discussion of how far he identified with the suffering figure. That is interpretation, not a statement by the artist.
History & provenance
The painting passed through French and other collections and was bought by the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo in 1946; the museum is now the Buffalo AKG Art Museum.
Sources
- Buffalo AKG Art Museum — collection entry for Paul Gauguin, ‘The Yellow Christ’ (1889; oil on canvas)
- Chapelle de Trémalo, Pont-Aven — the polychrome wooden crucifix
- Belinda Thomson, ‘Gauguin’ (Thames & Hudson)
Frequently asked
Is the yellow Christ based on a real object?
Yes. It is a painted wooden crucifix, probably seventeenth-century, that hangs in the chapel of Trémalo in the woods above Pont-Aven in Brittany.
Can you visit it?
Yes. The chapel of Trémalo and its crucifix are still there, a short walk from the centre of Pont-Aven, and the surrounding landscape is recognisable.
Where is the landscape?
The sloping fields, hedged plots and low hills around Pont-Aven in southern Brittany. Gauguin took the crucifix outdoors and set it in that countryside in autumn.
Why is Christ painted yellow?
The colour is symbolic, not observed — the yellow of the ripe and fading autumn fields around the cross, linking the crucifixion to the Breton land and its harvest.
Where is the painting now?
In the Buffalo AKG Art Museum (formerly the Albright-Knox Art Gallery), Buffalo, New York.
Related paintings
More by Paul Gauguin
The Green Christ
