This figure study of a man seen from behind in mid-stride, gripping a stick or rod in one raised hand, likely done around 1902, relates directly to a more fully worked transfer drawing, Return from the hunt, included in Avant et après, his final manuscript, completed shortly before he died in 1903, which entered The Courtauld collection in 2020 (MS.2020.XX.1.153). Relatively unusually among his surviving drawings, it retains numerous traces of Gauguin’s original sketch in graphite, and is also partially squared on the verso (see also a work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/834602 .)

One of the defining characteristics of Gauguin’s oeuvre is his repeated return to, and persistent reworking of, certain motifs across different media and often over the course of many years. A figure in a similar pose first appeared in the right-hand figure in the two painted versions of I Raro Te Oviri (1891), though in both cases the figure was female and the head was turned the other way, and resurfaced, this time in male form, in the woodcut Tahitian Carrying Bananas (1898-99). The spare quality of this study, which focuses on the figure with no reference to setting, suggests that it may be the prime version of the figure who appears in three more highly worked transfer drawings executed between 1900-1903: Adam and Eve (formerly in the collection of Jan Krugier), Return from the Hunt (Städel Museum, Frankfurt) and the version of Return from the Hunt that he included in Avant et après.

Formerly, the drawing belonged to Yves Renaudin, an abstract artist who in 1926 invited architect Jean Badovici and designer Eileen Gray to decorate his home in Vézelay, France.