Paysage de Te Vaa

Paysage de Te Vaa—landscape at Te Vaa—was painted in 1896 during a period of sustained landscape production in Gauguin's second Tahitian stay. 'Te Vaa' may refer to a specific location near his house at Punaauia, a place he returned to repeatedly as subject matter during these years. Now at the MuMa in Le Havre, the canvas is among several landscapes from this period where Gauguin explored the Tahitian interior, moving away from the coastal subjects of his first visit toward the denser, more mysterious landscape of the island's valleys and hillsides.

The landscape is constructed from large areas of contrasting color—saturated greens, deep blues, ochre earth—flattened against the picture plane in the synthetist manner that Gauguin developed from his Brittany period. The absence of atmospheric recession and the near-equal weight given to foreground, middle ground, and background creates a tapestry-like spatial compression.