Blue Tree Trunks. Arles

Gauguin's Blue Tree Trunks, painted at Arles in 1888, is one of the most formally radical canvases from his ill-fated collaboration with Van Gogh in the Yellow House. The two painters had agreed in advance that Arles would be the founding studio of a new artistic movement, with Gauguin as the dominant theoretical intelligence and Van Gogh providing the emotional intensity; the reality proved more explosive and less collaborative than either had imagined. Nevertheless, the Arles period produced canvases of extraordinary ambition from both painters, and Gauguin's blue tree trunks illustrate the specific formal development the Provençal environment provoked in him. The blue of the trunks — departing entirely from the naturalistic grey-brown of actual bark — is a declaration of Synthetist principle: color as the painter's expressive decision, not nature's description. The influence of Japanese printmaking, which both Gauguin and Van Gogh had studied intensely, is evident in the flat, pattern-like treatment of the repeated vertical forms, creating a surface organization closer to decorative design than to conventional landscape painting.

Gauguin renders the tree trunks with his mature Cloisonnist vocabulary — the forms simplified into bold, upright shapes, the blue color asserting itself against the landscape ground as expressive decision rather than naturalistic description. His composition creates a strong vertical rhythm through the repeated trunk forms. The treatment's relationship to Japanese prints (which he and Van Gogh both collected) is evident in the flat, pattern-like organization of the repeated vertical elements.