Village in Martinique (Femmes et Chevre dans le village)

Village in Martinique (Femmes et Chèvre dans le village, 1887) at the Israel Museum belongs to the small, crucial group of works Gauguin made during his four months in Martinique — his first sustained experience of tropical colonial life and the first step toward the Pacific. He had gone to Martinique with Charles Laval in the spring of 1887, fleeing the financial and personal difficulties of Paris. The encounter with Caribbean light, tropical vegetation, and the non-European faces of Martinique's population permanently transformed his artistic vision, and the paintings he made there represent the first appearance of the flat, bold color and the interest in non-European figures that would reach their full development in Tahiti. The village scene here — women and animals in a tropical settlement — shows his formal language beginning to simplify and intensify in response to the Caribbean light. The Israel Museum's collection of this canvas alongside the 1887 Martinique Village in the Landscape suggests that their acquisition of multiple Martinique works was deliberate, recognizing the period's historical importance in Gauguin's development.

The tropical village is rendered with a brighter, more vivid palette than Gauguin's European work — the Caribbean light intensifying his colour responses. Figures and buildings are observed directly, without yet the full Synthetist simplification of his later Breton work. The handling is transitional: Impressionist in its atmospheric responsiveness but already moving toward bolder, less modulated colour areas.