The Black Pigs

The Black Pigs (1891) at the Hungarian National Gallery in Budapest belongs to the group of everyday observation paintings Gauguin made during his first Tahitian year alongside the more iconic mythological and ceremonial subjects. Pigs were a significant element of traditional Polynesian agricultural life, and the black variety he depicted here were ubiquitous presences in the Tahitian village landscape he observed daily. His decision to treat them as subjects worthy of a finished canvas reflected the same democratic approach to subject matter that had led him to paint the quarries at Le Chou and the pigs at Pont-Aven in his European years. The Hungarian National Gallery's possession of this canvas is one of the curious outcomes of the international art market of the early twentieth century, which distributed Gauguin's works across European collections far beyond the major Western European centers. The gallery's strong collection of nineteenth-century European painting, with particular emphasis on French and Hungarian art, provides an unusual context for this Pacific subject in Budapest.

The pigs are rendered as dark, simplified masses moving through the warm ochre and green of the tropical landscape. Their black forms create strong value contrasts against the golden ground. The surrounding landscape is handled with the flat colour areas and firm contours of Gauguin's mature Tahitian style. The composition is observed rather than composed — casual and naturalistic by his standards.