The Gate

Gauguin's The Gate of 1889 belongs to his post-Arles Breton period — a time of reflective consolidation after the crisis with Van Gogh when he returned to the Breton subjects that had nurtured his most productive development. The gate as a motif in the Breton agricultural landscape was both a practical and a symbolic element: the stone gate posts and heavy wooden gates that organized the field systems of Finistère marked the boundaries between enclosed and open space, between the cultivated and the wild, between property and common ground. His choice of this apparently simple architectural element as a primary subject reflects his deepening commitment to finding symbolic weight in the most ordinary features of the Breton landscape — the same impulse that had led him to see the landscape itself as a stage for the visionary experiences he depicted in The Vision After the Sermon. The Kunsthaus Zürich, which holds this canvas, has one of the strongest Swiss collections of French modern painting, acquired largely through the patronage of Zurich industrialists who were among the earliest systematic collectors of Post-Impressionist work in the German-speaking world.

Gauguin renders the gate with his mature Synthetist approach — the architectural feature's geometric form simplified and integrated within the simplified landscape through his characteristic combination of outline and flat color. The gate's relationship to the landscape on either side creates the compositional structure. His handling of the Breton stone and the surrounding vegetation reflects the directness of his best 1889 work, the formal simplification now fully confident and expressive.