A Farm in Brittany

Painted in 1894 after Gauguin's return from his first Tahitian stay, this farm scene represents his nostalgic return to Breton subjects during the difficult period of re-adjustment to European life. He was unable to sell his Tahitian paintings as he had hoped, and his personal life was complicated. The farm in Brittany offered the comfort of familiar rural subjects he had explored extensively in the late 1880s. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York holds this canvas as evidence of Gauguin's continued attachment to Breton imagery even after his Tahitian transformation.

The Breton farm is rendered with the mature Synthetist clarity Gauguin had developed in the Pont-Aven period — bold flat colour zones, firm outlines, reduced atmospheric depth. The composition has a settled, almost nostalgic quality appropriate to the subject's resonance as a place of emotional return. The palette is rich but cooler than the Tahitian work, the greens and grey-browns of Brittany replacing the warm tropical golds.