Works on Paper 2019 - Jean Luc Baroni

However, these notations are rarely as elaborate
and highly coloured as the recto of this sheet is.
Therefore, several interesting connections with
biographical details and existing works can be
proposed. Firstly, Gauguin’s leopards watching
over a sleeping woman were based on sketches
made, during visits to the ‘Grande Ménagerie des
Indes’. This attraction came to Arles on 2 October
1888 in the course of Gauguin’s stay in the socalled
Yellow House, where he lived and worked
for a brief and intense few weeks with Vincent Van
Gogh 6 . Furthermore, this page is intriguingly related
to the study of a woman and a fox 7 , which was
preparatory for the painting La perte du pucelage
of 1890-91. This picture was posed for by Juliette
Huet, a young seamstress who became Gauguin’s
model and lover in Paris 8 . Both works share the
same sinuous line, comparable landscape elements
and the same sense of latent ferocity. However, the
sleeping woman studied on the present sheet has the
features of a Tahitian, which suggests that Gauguin
may have worked up the page, or redrawn the
leopards once he had arrived in Polynesia. The fact
that he used the same sketchbook again is confirmed
by the two aforementioned known sketchbook sheets
with connections to the painting titled Nave Nave
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