Forest Path

Forest Path (1873) at an unknown location belongs to the period before Gauguin had met Pissarro or committed seriously to painting, when his amateur practice was guided primarily by what he saw in his guardian Arosa's collection and in the Impressionist exhibitions he was beginning to attend. The forest path as a subject had deep roots in French landscape painting — from the Fontainebleau tradition of the Barbizon school through the early Impressionist woodland subjects of Monet and Sisley — and Gauguin's adoption of it reflects his immersion in the available French painting tradition. By 1873 he was still in the earliest phase of his artistic development, and the forest path provided a subject that demanded sustained outdoor observation and the management of light penetrating through canopy — exactly the technical problems that Pissarro would later guide him through more systematically. The 1873 date is early enough to suggest this canvas predates any formal instruction, representing Gauguin's unaided attempt to work within the Impressionist tradition he was observing.

The path leads through dark forest with overhead canopy reducing the available light. The handling creates a strong tonal contrast between the shaded tree masses and the lighter ground plane. The simplified treatment of foliage anticipates the Synthetist formal language more fully developed in the Breton figure paintings.