Marine avec vache

Marine avec vache (Seascape with Cow, 1888) at the Musée d'Orsay was painted during Gauguin's extended Le Pouldu stay on the Atlantic Breton coast, when the combination of the rugged coastline and the grazing cattle of the local farms provided characteristic subjects for his Synthetist formal experiments. The cow in a coastal landscape combined two of his Breton concerns: the observation of agricultural life as evidence of pre-modern rural culture, and the formal challenge of rendering an animal form within a landscape framework. His treatment departed from Impressionist naturalism toward the simplified, boldly outlined approach he was developing: the cow's form more emblematic than observed, the coastal setting organized through flat color zones rather than atmospheric gradation. The Orsay's multiple 1888 Gauguins together document the remarkable range of his production in the year of the Synthetist breakthrough — from the iconic Vision after the Sermon through domestic observation and landscape to this modest coastal animal painting.

Gauguin applied paint in broad, flat areas of strong color bounded by firm contour lines — a technique he called Synthetism, derived partly from medieval stained glass and Japanese prints. His palette is deliberately non-naturalistic, using vivid magentas, ochres.