Landscape near Arles

Landscape near Arles at the Indianapolis Museum of Art was painted by Gauguin in the autumn of 1888 during his Arles stay with Van Gogh. The landscape around Arles — the flat Crau plain, the orchards and vineyards, the canal cutting through agricultural land — provided both artists with abundant subject matter. Gauguin's approach to this characteristically Provençal terrain was more detached and schematic than Van Gogh's intense, almost hallucinatory engagement with the same landscape. Already thinking beyond Impressionism toward a more primitive, essential art, Gauguin reduced the landscape to simplified forms and bold color areas.

The Arles landscape is organized into horizontal bands of earth, vegetation, and sky handled with broad, flat areas of color rather than broken Impressionist strokes. Gauguin's interest is in the color relationships — ochre earth, deep green vegetation, blue sky — rather than in atmospheric nuance or surface texture.