Coming and Going, Martinique

Coming and Going, Martinique was painted during Gauguin's pivotal 1887 stay on the island, which lasted from June to October before illness forced him to return to France. The image of women moving along a path through tropical vegetation distils what Gauguin responded to most immediately in Martinique: the easy physical presence of women working and moving in an outdoor landscape utterly unlike the cramped industrial Paris he had left. This canvas was among those he brought back to Paris and showed to Theo van Gogh, who bought it for the Goupil gallery — a crucial early sale that encouraged Gauguin's conviction that the tropical subject had a future.

Gauguin captures the filtered tropical light with a warm, vibrant palette of greens, ochres, and terra cottas. The figures are placed in rhythmic procession across the middleground, their dark silhouettes contrasting with the bright ground path. The brushwork retains Pissarro's influence in the broken foliage treatment but with more saturated individual colour notes.