Bouquet de fleurs

Gauguin's bouquet paintings from the 1880s belong to the formal tradition of the French floral still life, which he had studied through the Impressionist flower pieces of Monet and the more structured arrangements of Fantin-Latour. By the mid-1880s Gauguin was using flower subjects as vehicles for colour study, arranging blooms of varying colour and texture as the Impressionists used them — as opportunities for optical colour mixing without narrative or symbolic burden. These flower pieces, modest in ambition, provided income when the larger compositions did not sell.

The flowers are rendered with individual attention to each bloom's colour and form. The background is kept neutral or dark to allow the colour of the flowers to read clearly. The handling combines a degree of Impressionist looseness in the petals with more deliberate structuring of the overall arrangement.