Martinican Meadow

Paul Gauguin's 'Martinican Meadow' (1887) is a landscape from his crucial Caribbean period — the Martinique meadow providing a landscape subject that was formally familiar (grass, sky, possibly cattle or figures) but visually transformed by the tropical light and the unfamiliar vegetation that gave the Caribbean landscape its distinctive character. His Martinique landscapes were crucial stepping stones toward his later Polynesian subjects, establishing his practice of discovering formal and chromatic renewal through engagement with non-European landscapes.

Gauguin renders the Martinican meadow with the energized color response that the tropical light provoked in him — the specific greens of the Caribbean vegetation under intense tropical sun, the quality of the light and shadow in the landscape, and the particular atmosphere of the island giving the familiar meadow subject a new visual character. His brushwork in the Martinique landscapes shows his Impressionist foundation energized by the unfamiliarity of the subject, the observed colors pushed toward intensity by the light's actual qualities.