By the summer of 1886, when Gauguin first worked in Pont-Aven, the small village on the coast of Brittany had been “colonized” for several decades by a multinational group of artists who were attracted to the region’s traditions and indigenous population, especially the women (bretonnes), with their ornate velvet and lace folkloric ensembles and picturesque bonnets, or coifs.² When Gauguin returned to Pont-Aven in 1888, he was surrounded by an ever-growing group of followers.³ Becoming known collectively as the Pont-Aven School, its members called for a new approach to easel painting based on the memory of a subject and the...