Goats against landscape

Goats Against Landscape, painted in 1891 and now in the National Museum in Warsaw, belongs to the same intense period of Alpine animal painting that produced A Goat with her Kid of 1890. By 1891 Segantini had fully committed to Divisionist technique and to the high Alpine landscape as his permanent subject and home. His decision to depict goats rather than cattle, horses, or more conventionally picturesque animals was deliberate: goats were animals of the poor, of the subsistence farmers who clung to marginal Alpine land, and by elevating them to monumental subjects Segantini was making a statement about the dignity of the overlooked and the visually unpromising. On a panel support rather than canvas, this work demonstrates his occasional use of different grounds which affected the behaviour of his Divisionist strokes. The Warsaw National Museum's collection, enriched by acquisitions from across European cultural history, places this Alpine work in dialogue with the full range of

Oil on panel using Segantini's mature Divisionist technique. The panel support gives the paint strokes a firmer ground than canvas, affecting the texture of the final surface. Long, separated strokes of colour describe both animals and landscape with the same degree of optical attention, unified by