Waterside Houses

Gauguin's Waterside Houses from his Pont-Aven or Rouen period in the mid-1880s belongs to the substantial body of architectural landscape paintings he made before his departure for Martinique and Polynesia. Houses reflected in water — a subject the Impressionists had made canonical — gave Gauguin an opportunity to explore colour as optical fact in the reflected surface, the same water providing different information about the same scene. By the mid-1880s he was treating these conventional subjects with a structural emphasis drawn from Cézanne rather than the atmospheric looseness of Monet.

The reflected forms in the water are handled with varied horizontal strokes suggesting the slight movement of the surface. The solid buildings above are given more structured treatment. The palette of pale ochre and grey-blue is consistent with the overcast northern light of Normandy or Brittany.