Paul Gauguin French (1848-1903) The Loss of Virginity, 1890-1891 Oil on canvas Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. European Art Location:  Exhibit, Gallery 274 View Location Dimensions:  H: 35 1/4 in, W: 51 1/4 in, FH: 46 in, FW: 62 in Object ID: 71.510 Click for more information: Description Exhibitions Publications Provenance Listen to Audio Commentary Courtesy of Acoustiguide Corporation Description This is an oil on canvas painting. Lying deathlike on the ground, a naked maiden holds a plucked flower (an iris?), a traditional symbol of lost innocence. With her left arm she embraces an evil-eyed fox, who precipitates her downfall with a paw upon her heart. In the background, composed of broad fields color with dark outlines, peasants, possibly part of a wedding party walk along a narrow path. close Exhibitions "Gauguin," Galerie Dru, Paris, 1923. (Exhib. cat. no. 20). "Gauguin," Orangerie des Tuileries, Paris, Summer 1949. (Exhib. cat. no. 24). "Paul Gauguin," Kunstmuseum, Basel, Nov. 26, 1949 - Jan. 29, 1950. (Exhib. cat. no. 41). "Gauguin," Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne, 1950. (Exhib. cat. no. 40). "Motif in Painting," Norton Gallery of Art, Palm Beach, Feb. 7 - March 2, 1952. (Exhib. cat. no. 8). "Paul Gauguin. His Place in the Meeting of East and West," Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, March 27 - April 25, 1954. (Exhib. cat. no. 23). "The Two Sides of the Medal. French Painting from Gérôme to Gauguin," Detroit Institute of Arts, 1954. (Exhib. cat. no. 107). "Gauguin Paintings, Engravings, and Sculpture," Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, and Tate Gallery, London, Sept. 30 - Oct. 26, 1955. (Exhib. cat. no. 37). "Paintings from the Collection of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.," Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon; Seattle Art Museum; California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Minneapolis Art Institute; St. Louis City Art Museum; William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas City; Detroit Institute of Arts; and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, March 2, 1956 - April 14, 1957. (Exhib. cat. no. 84). "Chrysler Art Museum of Provincetown Inaugural Exhibition," Provincetown, Massachusetts, 1958. (Exhib. cat. no. 21). "Gauguin," Art Institute of Chicago and Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Feb. 12 - May 31, 1959. (Exhib. cat. no. 26). "French Paintings, 1789-1929, from the Collection of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.," Dayton Art Institute, March 25 - May 22, 1960. (Exhib. cat. no. 69). "The Controversial Century 1850-1950," Chrysler Art Museum of Provincetown, Massachusetts, and National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 1962. (Exhib. cat. not paged). "Gauguin and the Pont-Aven Group," Tate Gallery, London, Jan. 7 - Feb. 13, 1966. (Exhib. cat. no. 36). "The Sacred and Profane in Symbolist Art," Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 1969. (Exhib. cat. no. 89). "Puvis de Chavannes and the Modern Tradition," Art Gallery of Ontario, Oct. 24 - Nov. 30, 1975. (Exhib. cat. no. 52). "Le Symbolisme en Europe," Museum Boymansvan Beuningen, Rotterdam, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Baden-Baden, and Grand Palais, Paris, Nov. 14, 1975 - July 19, 1976. (Exhib. cat. no. 55). "Treasures from the Chrysler Museum at Norfolk and Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.," Tennessee Fine Arts Center at Cheekwood, Nashville, June 12 - Sept. 5, 1977. (Exhib. cat. no. 42). "Veronese to Franz Kline: Masterworks from the Chrysler Museum at Norfolk," for the benefit of The Chrysler Museum Art Reference Library, Wildenstein & Co., New York, N. Y., April 13 - May 13, 1978. (Exhib. cat. no. 25). "Vincent Van Gogh and the Birth of Cloisonism," Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, and Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam, Jan. 24 - June 14, 1981. (Exhib. cat. no. 70). "French Paintings from The Chrysler Museum", North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, May 31 - September 14, 1986; Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama, November 6, 1986 - January 18, 1987. (Exhib. cat. no. 40). "Paul Gauguin," Museum Folkwang, Essen, June 1 -October 18, 1998; Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, November 6, 1998 - January 10, 1999. "Gauguin's Nirvana: Painters at Le Pouldu, 1889-1890," Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford CT, Jan. 26 - April 29, 2001. (Exhib. cat. no. 86). "Van Gogh and Gauguin: The 'Studio of the South'," Art Institute of Chicago, Sept. 11, 2001 - Jan. 13, 2002; Van Gogh Museum, Feb. 9 - June 2, 2002. "Gauguin Tahiti," Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Ma., February 29 - June 20, 2004. close Publications Bertina S. Manning, Paintings from the Collection of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.: An Exhibition Organized by the Portland Art Museum, Oregon, exh. cat., Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oreg., 1956, no. 84. Priscilla C. Colt and Charles H. Elam, French Paintings 1789-1929 from the collection of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., exh. cat, Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, Ohio, 1960, no. 69. Charles F. Comfort and William S.A. Dale, The Controversial Century: 1850-1950, exh. cat., Chrysler Art Museum of Provincetown, Provincetown, Ma., 1962, not paged. Eric M. Zafran and Mario Amaya, Treasures from the Chrysler Museum at Norfolk and Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., exh. cat., Tennessee Fine Arts Center at Cheekwood, Nashville, Tn., 1977, no. 42. Eric M. Zafran and Mario Amaya, Veronese to Franz Kline: Masterworks from the Chrysler Museum at Norfolk, exh. cat., Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Va., 1978, no. 25. LCCN: 78-52261 The Chrysler Museum: Selections from the Permanent Collection, Norfolk, Virginia (Norfolk: Chrysler Museum, 1982), 65. ISBN: 0-940744-37-6 Click to view availability at the Jean Outland Chrysler Library Jefferson C. Harrison, French Paintings from The Chrysler Museum (Norfolk: The Chrysler Museum, 1986), 79-82, no. 40. *See for further references. ISBN: 0-940744-54-6 Click to view availability at the Jean Outland Chrysler Library Jefferson C. Harrison, The Chrysler Museum Handbook of the European and American Collections: Selected Paintings, Sculpture and Drawings (Norfolk: The Chrysler Museum, 1991), 152-153, pl. 119. ISBN: 0-940744-59-7, 0-940744-62-7 Click to view availability at the Jean Outland Chrysler Library Gilles Genty, Paul Élie Ranson 1861-1909 (Paris: Somogy Editions d'Art, 1997), 24. ISBN: 2-85056-297-1 Click to view availability at the Jean Outland Chrysler Library Nikkei Art, Japan; October 1997. Joichiro Kawamura, Introduction to the Fin de Siécle's Paintings (Tokyo, Japan: Shinchosha Book Division, 1998), 87. Georg-W. Költzsch, Paul Gauguin, Das Verlorene Paradies (Essen: Museum Folkwang, 1998), pl. 9. ISBN: 3-7701-4199-7. ISBN: 3-7701-4198-9 Click to view availability at the Jean Outland Chrysler Library Georg-W. Költzsch, Vernissage (Berlin: Die Zeitschrift Zur Ausstellung, Nr. 12/1998 6) p. 20. Patricia Mathews, Passionate Discontent: Creativity, Gender, And French Symbolist Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 164. ISBN: 0-226-51018-2 Click to view availability at the Jean Outland Chrysler Library Mariano Rajoy Brey, Juan Carlos Elorza Guinea, Ángel Olivares Ramírez, and Eduardo Francés Conde with contributing authors, El Jardin De Melibea (Burgos: Monasterio de San Juan, 2000), 247. *In Spanish. ISBN: 84-95146-32-0 Click to view availability at the Jean Outland Chrysler Library Eric M. Zafran, ed., Gauguin's Nirvana: Painters at Le Pouldu 1889-90 (New Haven: Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, in association with Yale University Press, 2001), 54-55, no. 86. *Also reproduced on the cover, in detail, of the Yale University Press Spring 2001 catalog. ISBN: 0-300-08954-6 Click to view availability at the Jean Outland Chrysler Library Douglas W. Druick and Peter Kort Zegers, Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Studio of the South, exh. cat., The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois and The Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, 2001-2002, 335. ISBN: 0-500-51054-7, 0-86559-194-6 Click to view availability at the Jean Outland Chrysler Library Nancy Mowll Mathews, Paul Gauguin: An Erotic Life (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001), 160, fig. 51. ISBN: 0-300-09109-5 Click to view availability at the Jean Outland Chrysler Library Colta Ives, Susan Alyson Stein, Charlotte Hale and Marjorie Shelley, The Lure of the Exotic: Gauguin in New York Collections, exh. cat., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, N.Y., 2002, 172, 200. ISBN: 1-58839-061-6, 1-58839-062-4, 0-300-09371-3 Click to view availability at the Jean Outland Chrysler Library Kymberly N. Pinder, ed. Race-ing Art History (New York: Routledge, 2002), 143-144, fig. 7.1. ISBN: 0-415-92760-9, 0-415-92761-7 Click to view availability at the Jean Outland Chrysler Library Claire Frèches-Thory, George T.M. Shackelford, et al., Gauguin Tahiti, l'atelier des tropiques, exh. cat., Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, France, 2003, 15, 16, 19, 201, 381. ISBN: 2-7118-4576-1 Click to view availability at the Jean Outland Chrysler Library George T.M. Shackelford and Claire Frèches-Thory, et al., Gauguin Tahiti, exh. cat., Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Ma., 2004, cat. no. 5, 12, 13, 350. ISBN: 0-87846-666-5, 0-87846-667-3 Click to view availability at the Jean Outland Chrysler Library David H. Lawrence, Der Fuchs: Mit einem Nachwort von Doris Lessing (Berlin: Verlag Klaus Wagenbach, 2004), cover. Guillermo Solana, Gauguin and the Origins of Symbolism, exh. cat., Fundación Caja Madrid and Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Spain, 2004, 32. ISBN: 84-96233-13-8, 0-85667-595-5 Click to view availability at the Jean Outland Chrysler Library Tatsuru Takahashi, ed., The History of Impressionism (Japan: Shogakukan Inc., 2004), 393. **In Japanese close Provenance The artist, 1891-1895 Gauguin sale, Hôtel des Ventes, Paris, Feb. 18, 1895 Comte Antoine de la Rochefoucauld, Paris, 1895-1948 Bequeathed to the son of Comte Antoine de la Rochefoucauld, E. Rochefoucauld, a dealer, who sold it to Clement Altarriba Altarriba collection, Paris, (also a dealer) Matthey collection, Paris, 1949 E. and A. Silberman Galleries, New York, 1954-1955 Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. to The Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, 1971. close Paul Gauguin French, 1848-1903 The Loss of Virginity, 1890-1891 Oil on canvas, 35½" x 51¼" Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., 71.510 Compared with the traditional and often sentimental subjects reserved for images of women in late-19th-century French art, the theme of Gauguin's painting--the loss of sexual innocence-- must have seemed shocking, a direct challenge to conservative, middle-class taste. The painting's blunt, schematic style--the broad, flat bands of bright color bounded by dark outlines--must have seemed equally radical, reflecting the artist's interest in the avant- garde aesthetic known as Synthetism. Following the dictates of Synthetism, Gauguin rejected realistic representation in favor of a more purely Symbolist approach to form, using the colors, shapes, and objects of the visible world as subjective allusions to ideas and moods. Lying deathlike on the ground, the naked maiden holds a plucked flower (an iris?), a traditional symbol of innocence lost. With her left hand she embraces an evil-eyed fox, which precipitates her downfall with a paw upon her heart. (Gauguin called the fox a symbol of "perversity" or lust.) The landscape is that of Le Pouldu, a secluded spot on the Brittany coast where the artist often worked in the late 1880s. The time is autumn, the dying season. The grain in the fields has been harvested, and a sheaf of it lies at the maiden's feet, where it serves as a melancholy reference to the "reaping" of her purity. The group of Breton peasants in the background--a wedding party, perhaps, or a group of churchgoers--may represent the world of respectability from which the girl is now excluded. Gauguin's symbolic treatment of the painful passage from maidenhood to woman- hood may have had a highly personal meaning for him. The woman who modeled for THE LOSS OF VIRGINITY --a young seamstress named Juliette Huet--was Gauguin's mistress at the time. The artist met Huet in Paris in 1890, and though she was pregnant with his daughter, he abandoned her when he departed the following year for Tahiti.   museum@chrysler.org Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia All Rights Reserved ©2006