The Grasshoppers and the Ants: A Souvenir of Martinique, from the Volpini Suite: Dessins lithographiques

The Grasshoppers and the Ants: A Souvenir of Martinique, from the Volpini Suite: Dessins lithographiques

Paul Gauguin

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

On the fairgrounds of the Paris World's Fair of 1889, at Volpini's Café des Arts, Gauguin exhibited a brand new suite of ten zincographs printed on bright yellow paper. Known as the "Volpini Suite," the prints served as a pictorial souvenir of Gauguin's recent travels in Brittany, Martinique, and Arles. Here Gauguin depicts a group of women by the sea in Martinique. Some walk along a path balancing baskets on their heads while others rest upon the ground. Their graceful poses and balletic movements have a decorative, choreographed quality. Gauguin was enchanted by the women he encountered on the French Caribbean island, as he described in a letter: "The thing that makes me smile the most are the figures, and each day it's a continual coming and going of negresses dressed up in colored garments with graceful movements infinitely varied." The title of the work refers to a fable by Jean de la Fontaine.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Grasshoppers and the Ants: A Souvenir of Martinique, from the Volpini Suite: Dessins lithographiquesThe Grasshoppers and the Ants: A Souvenir of Martinique, from the Volpini Suite: Dessins lithographiquesThe Grasshoppers and the Ants: A Souvenir of Martinique, from the Volpini Suite: Dessins lithographiquesThe Grasshoppers and the Ants: A Souvenir of Martinique, from the Volpini Suite: Dessins lithographiquesThe Grasshoppers and the Ants: A Souvenir of Martinique, from the Volpini Suite: Dessins lithographiques

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.