Landscape

Gauguin's generic 'Landscape' subjects from the Brittany and Normandy period (1885–1888) were produced in substantial numbers as he worked his way toward the Synthetist breakthrough of 1888. These relatively modest canvases — rural paths, fields, distant buildings — show the Impressionist inheritance being systematically tested and modified: the broken-colour surface beginning to coalesce into larger planes, the atmospheric shimmer giving way to more structural definition. Individual examples are difficult to date precisely, but collectively they document the crucial transition between Pissarro's Impressionism and the flat colour of the Pont-Aven synthesis.

The handling falls between Impressionist surface animation and the more deliberate Synthetist structuring of his later Brittany work. Colour is relatively naturalistic but applied with a confidence that shows Gauguin had absorbed and was beginning to move beyond his Impressionist training.