Description
Human Misery places a bowed woman beside another figure in a scene whose stillness carries emotional weight. Her hand approaches her lowered face, while a tree frames the upper part of the composition. Paul Gauguin made the image in 1889 for the Volpini Suite, using brown ink on yellow paper. The title invites a reading of distress, but the gesture remains intimate rather than becoming an expansive theatrical display.
The print’s simplified shapes make the figure’s posture unusually clear. The yellow ground holds the forms together, while the darker marks concentrate attention around the head, body and surrounding tree. Gauguin leaves the cause of the emotion unspecified, allowing the title and visible gesture to work together without supplying a complete story. The result is a small scene of inward feeling, made compelling through the relationship between bodily weight and a restrained setting.
Read our guide to giclée prints or browse the Paul Gauguin collection.
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