An Orchard under the Church of Bihorel

An Orchard under the Church of Bihorel (1884) at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid belongs to Gauguin's Normandy landscape production during his early professional years, working in the plein-air tradition he had absorbed from Pissarro. Bihorel, a commune near Rouen in Normandy, was among the sites he painted during extended stays in the region in the early 1880s. The orchard beneath the church combined two characteristic French landscape elements — the flowering fruit trees of Norman orchard country and the medieval church tower that organized the landscape's human geography — in a composition that reflected his sustained Impressionist engagement with regional specificity. The Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum's extraordinary collection of European painting from the medieval period through the twentieth century includes this early Gauguin alongside major works from across the history of Western art, providing Madrid with one of the most comprehensive surveys of European painting in any single institution.

The orchard is painted with varied, responsive brushwork in the Impressionist manner — dappled light through blossoming trees, the church tower as a vertical accent in the background. The palette is cool and northern, with the pink and white blossoms providing warm color notes. The handling shows Pissarro's influence in its broken, light-filled character.