The Mango Trees, Martinique

The mango trees of Martinique gave Gauguin his first non-European landscape subject, and he painted them with an intensity that anticipates his entire subsequent career. His 1887 Caribbean sojourn was undertaken partly under financial duress — he had hoped to find cheap living costs alongside inspiring subjects — and the mango groves and tropical vegetation of the island's interior provided exactly the richness of natural material he sought. Back in Paris that winter, he showed his Martinique canvases to Theo van Gogh at Boussod, Valadon & Cie, who purchased several, bringing Gauguin into the Van Gogh brothers' orbit for the first time. Theo's brother Vincent saw these Martinique paintings as among the most exciting work being made in France, and they contributed directly to the invitation that would bring Gauguin to Arles the following year. The mango subject represents the turning point between Gauguin as a Post-Impressionist working within the French tradition and Gauguin as the great primitivist — the painter who would use tropical subject matter as the vehicle for a completely new pictorial language.

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.