In 1889, Gauguin completed his series of ten zincographs – lithographs worked with chalk and tusche washes on zinc plates rather than stone, which represented the artist’s first foray into printmaking. While they were not formally exhibited, they were visible sur demande at the Café Volpini Synthesist Exhibition that same year, on the fairgrounds of the Paris World's Fair. The series – now known as the Volpini Suite after the name of the café and its proprietor – established Gauguin’s style that came to distinguish the rest of his career. Slightly less than 50 impressions of each subject were printed on a strongly colored papier canari, or yellow paper, a wholly distinctive aspect of the suite, for which Gauguin gave no explanation.  

As a series, the imagery of the prints derives from Gauguin’s travels to the locales of Martinique, Brittany, and Arles between 1886 and 1888, serving as pictorial souvenirs. Within these prints, the artist began to establish some of his most familiar motifs: the mourning Eve, the woman in the waves and fruit bearers, among others. The most overarching theme of his subjects are simply people in their daily surroundings, punctuated by Gauguin’s increasingly pervasive fascination with what he saw to be ‘authentic’ rural life; it was the pursuit of this very subject that eventually led the artist to Tahiti and ultimately to his dissolution in the islands of the Marquesas. As such, the Volpini Suite represents a pivotal moment in Gauguin’s oeuvre, taking inspiration from his past but pointing towards his future.

“I find everything poetic, and it’s in the corners of my heart which are sometimes mysterious that I catch a glimpse of poetry… I feel a sensation that leads me into a poetic state…”

—Paul Gauguin

Les Laveuses, inspired by women Gauguin viewed on the banks of a river in Arles, is one of the most beautiful and significant of Gauguin’s lithographs, with a fully developed abstract, evocative pattern: the curling, undulating shapes in the water are used to echo the sinuous form of the bending woman, and the connection of shape relationships between the cow, the line of the riverbank, and the standing woman. Its flat picture plane and bold shapes with strong outlines demonstrate Gauguin’s use of the compositional style of Japanese prints. For him, Ukiyo-e prints were a means of awakening an emotional reaction – like many of his Synthesist contemporaries, he did not seek a simple pictorial description, but rather an evocation of the sensations inspired by a scene.