Landscape of Martinique

Gauguin spent four months in Martinique in 1887, and this landscape represents a pivotal transitional moment in his development—the first time he immersed himself in a tropical environment and began moving away from European Impressionist conventions. Away from Brittany and Paris, he encountered lush vegetation, intense Caribbean light, and a non-European way of life that permanently redirected his aesthetic. The Neue Pinakothek in Munich holds this canvas, which shows him already flattening form and intensifying colour beyond what his Impressionist contemporaries were doing. Martinique planted the seed for his later Tahitian departure.

The dense tropical foliage is built up in overlapping passages of saturated green and blue-green, departing from Impressionist colour mixing toward broader, more autonomous zones. Brushwork is still relatively varied in direction but the palette shows a decisive move toward chromatic intensity over tonal accuracy.