COPENHAGEN.- The Glyptotek has added a rare new work to its Gauguin collection: a hand-coloured lithograph of which only two copies are known to exist worldwide. It is the museum’s first graphic work by the French artist. Its subject – Black women working on Martinique – reveals a story of French colonial rule and a romanticised view of life under colonialism.

With the acquisition of The Grasshoppers and the Ants – A Memory from Martinique (1889), the Glyptotek opens a new chapter in its world-renowned Gauguin collection. Until now, the collection has comprised nearly 60 works spanning painting, ceramics, woodcarving and drawing—but no prints. The new work thus represents a lesser-known aspect of Paul Gauguin’s (1848–1903) artistic practice.

The lithograph is a proof from Gauguin’s first and only graphic series, the Volpini Suite. The series represented a turning point in the artist’s career, showcasing many of the qualities that came to characterise his style: brightly coloured and flat, starkly outlined and boldly composed.

The work will play a key role in the Glyptotek’s presentation of Gauguin and his oeuvre to the public, illustrating the breadth of his experimentation. It will also serve as a point of departure for new research into the artist and into French art of the period, which forms a cornerstone of the museum’s collection.

‘This work allows us to present Gauguin as a bold and uncompromising artist, experimenting across media and techniques, and as a French citizen embedded in the colonial realities of his time. Martinique played a central role in his life and artistic development, and this lithograph enables us to nuance the story of how France’s global connections left their mark on the motifs that made him famous. It is precisely in the tension between art and context, experimentation and history, that Gauguin’s works gain depth – inviting us to view his art as both aesthetic expression and historical document,’ says Anna Kærsgaard Gregersen, Curator of French Art at the Glyptotek.

Idealised colonialism

The Grasshoppers and the Ants – A Memory from Martinique was inspired by Gauguin’s stay on the former French colony of Martinique in 1887, where he supervised workers on a fruit plantation. Although slavery had been abolished, many locals continued to labour under harsh conditions – and it is these working women that Gauguin depicts. Yet instead of weary plantation workers, he portrays them as serene figures in a lush, dreamlike landscape. The title refers to Aesop’s fable of the grasshopper who sings away the summer while the ants diligently prepare for winter. Gauguin may have used the fable to stage his scene: the working women as ants, the resting women as grasshoppers—all rendered as types within a romanticised portrayal.

‘Gauguin paints an image of an idyllic paradise, but against the backdrop of a reality that, for many people in the colonised world, was anything but paradisal,’ says Julie Lejsgaard Christensen, Head of Collections and Curating at the Glyptotek, who continues: ‘While the piece is a rare and fascinating example of the artist’s graphic work, it is this tension between fact and imagination that gives it particular relevance today. In Gauguin’s romanticised depictions of the colonised world of his time, we can trace both a longing for paradise and the deliberate blind spots of the colonial worldview.’

The newly acquired work can be seen in the exhibition Gauguin & Kihara – First Impressions at the Glyptotek.