Old Maids of Arles

This print belongs to the Volpini Suite, a set of 11 zincograph prints named after the café where Gauguin displayed them during the 1889 World’s Fair. The subject was taken from a painting he made the year before during his brief but tumultuous stay with Vincent van Gogh in Arles, France. Struck by the noble qualities of Arlesian women, Gauguin shows them solemnly strolling through the park across the street from van Gogh’s house in the traditional shawls and headdresses of the region. The severely flattened and highly stylized forms are hallmarks of Gauguin’s “synthetist” style, in which lines and forms are abstracted to evoke the artist’s thoughts and feelings.