Paul Gauguin's The Red Cow

Paul Gauguin's 1889 painting, "The Red Cow," is oil on canvas (48.17.2), painted during the artist's stay in Brittany. It is representative of rural peasant life in 19th Century Europe. As Brettell points out, there were "three levels of French society, rural workers, urban workers, and urban bourgeoise" during that time period (174). Peasant images were quite popular among artists like Gauguin who had grown to despise the corrupt nature of European urban society, and found the simplicity of country life more to their taste. This painting by Gauguin "can be interpreted as part of an elemental humanism, in which the class-bound fashion trends of cities are removed from the viewer's consideration so that the art functions on a generally human plane" (Brettell 173).

The issue of class is critically addressed in this painting which represents the peasant class as hard-working and pious and by extension more desirable as human beings than city people who use machines, and do not have to grow their own food and goods.

"The Red Cow" is divided into three parts: the foreground, mid-ground and background. The foreground depicts the red cow on the lower right, part of its head outside the picture. The lower left, leaving the picture is a peasant woman in working attire carrying a milk jug (although it could be a water jug) and slightly bent over from its weight. Her expression is not happy, but rather dour, perhaps because Gauguin means to show what a hard life she has. It may b

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