The Black Pigs

Painted in 1891 during Gauguin's first Tahitian year, this scene of black pigs wandering a tropical landscape is an example of his sustained interest in the ordinary details of Polynesian rural life. The Hungarian National Gallery in Budapest holds this canvas as part of an important collection of Post-Impressionist work in Central Europe. The pigs — domestic animals introduced by Europeans but fully absorbed into everyday Tahitian life — are observed with the same attentive directness Gauguin brought to his more iconic mythological subjects.

The pigs are rendered as dark, simplified masses moving through the warm ochre and green of the tropical landscape. Their black forms create strong value contrasts against the golden ground. The surrounding landscape is handled with the flat colour areas and firm contours of Gauguin's mature Tahitian style. The composition is observed rather than composed — casual and naturalistic by his standards.