Flowers and a Bowl of Fruit on a Table

Painted in 1894 after Gauguin's return from his first Tahitian stay, this still life shows him working with European flowers and fruit in a manner that integrates his Tahitian colour experience with traditional still-life composition. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston holds this canvas. Gauguin was having difficulty re-establishing himself in Paris after Tahiti — his exhibition of Tahitian work had been only modestly successful — and this domestic still life represents a moment of reflection and consolidation between his two major Polynesian journeys.

The still life is arranged with Gauguin's characteristic decorative clarity — flowers in a vase and fruit in a bowl providing the complementary forms of a traditional arrangement, but treated with his mature Synthetist palette of rich, unhesitating colour. The background is handled flatly, without atmospheric recession, giving the whole composition the vibrant, jewel-like surface of his best still lifes.