One of the paintings they discovered was Aline, The Mulatto Woman, by an artist they both admired, Delacroix. "The extraordinary thing about it, for nineteenth-century Europe, was that she was both black and beautiful...It must also have stuck Gauguin that the woman in the picture had the same name as his mother and daughter: Aline...This image may have given rise to his numerous pictures of similarly sensual, bare-breasted Polynesian women."
"To Gauguin's mind, there was only one blot in the admirable gallery at Montpellier: a self-portrait by the elderly academic star Alexander Cabanel. Gauguin could not stand his slick and glossy work. 'Cabanel!' he snorted. 'Stupidity and fatuity!'"
They also came across the Pond by Théodore Rousseau, which Van Gogh enthusiastically admired, and which Gauguin despised.
They also found Stratonice and Antiochus by Ingres which Gauguin loved and Vincent hated.
They both appreciated Giotto's Death of the Virgin.
"The heart of the museum at Montpellier was the collection of one man: Alfred Bruyas...a wealthy local man...an enthusiastic patron of several artists...[who] had also been markedly eccentric." This is a portrait of himself he commissioned from Delacroix...
Vincent was more moved by Delacroix's Women in Algiers (different than the painting of the same name in Paris)...
Vincent also appreciated Bathers by Courbet...
But he failed to mention the most famous Courbet, Meeting, aka Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet, depicting the meeting of Courbet and his patron Alfred Bruyas.
This painting also made a deep impression on Gauguin, because a few months later he produced a painting entitled Bonjour, Monsieur Gauguin.
