Landscape Study

Landscape Study (1882) at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen belongs to Gauguin's most intensive Impressionist learning period, when he was producing large numbers of plein-air studies under Pissarro's direct guidance at Pontoise and Osny. The 'study' designation — étude — was significant in the Impressionist vocabulary: it referred to direct outdoor observation as opposed to the studio elaboration of finished exhibition pictures, and its practitioners viewed it as the foundation of artistic honesty. Pissarro had been insisting on the study as the starting point for all serious landscape work since the 1860s, and Gauguin adopted this principle wholeheartedly during his years of Impressionist apprenticeship. The Glyptotek's possession of this early landscape study alongside more developed works of the same period allows Copenhagen visitors to understand the working practice that underpinned the finished canvases.

The rapid, exploratory handling distinguishes this from more finished canvases. Colour is applied directly and confidently, with little subsequent revision. The spatial organisation is basic — ground, middle distance, sky — without elaborate compositional elaboration. The work reads as direct outdoor observation rather than studio composition.