When Gauguin returned to France after his first trip to Tahiti, he headed to the picturesque village of Pont-Aven, on the Breton coast, in the hope of recapturing the exhilaration he had experienced while painting there in previous years. Unfortunately, on this visit his activity was restricted by a fractured leg he suffered in a brawl with sailors. Thus, instead of standing before his easel, the artist spent much of his time seated, creating works on paper, many of which are likely to have been stored in this portfolio. The watercolors he drew on its inside covers, probably during the summer of 1894, recall subjects Gauguin had treated before in Brittany: the rolling landscape, serpentine waterways, and simple products of country life.

The mock-heroic presentation of this portfolio to the safekeeping of the innkeeper Marie-Jeanne Gloanec—as formally set forth in writing on its front cover—may have constituted the grand finale to a bibulous evening Gauguin spent with his artist cronies Roderic O'Conor, Eric Forbes-Robertson, and Armand Séguin, whose names are inscribed in the dedication. This extraordinary work, surely one of Gauguin's most appealing excursions into the decorative arts, remained virtually unknown until recently.