Poplars

Gauguin painted poplar-lined landscapes during his Normandy and Ile-de-France period, following the canonical French landscape subject of the poplar row that Monet would famously treat as a serial subject in 1891. Poplars — planted in rows as windbreaks along Norman roads and rivers — provided Gauguin with a compositional device of strong vertical rhythms against horizontal landscape space, anticipating the formal use of vertical tree forms in his Tahitian figure paintings. These Normandy poplars occupy an early position in his career but show the instinct for vertical-horizontal compositional architecture that persists throughout his work.

The poplar forms are rendered as tapering vertical presences against the sky. The horizontal landscape below provides a stable ground plane. Foliage is handled with Impressionist broken colour in the greens and golds appropriate to summer or autumn poplars. The composition relies on the formal rhythm of the tree row for its primary organisational structure.