Te Bourao II

Te Bourao II, painted in 1897, depicts the bourao tree—a Tahitian coastal plant with broad leaves—that appeared in several of Gauguin's Pacific works as both compositional element and symbolic presence. The bourao's dense tropical foliage provided Gauguin with the lush, saturated greens he used as chromatic counterweights to the warm earth and skin tones of his figure subjects. This canvas, now in a private collection, belongs to the sustained investigation of Tahitian landscape imagery that occupied much of his second Pacific stay.

The bourao foliage is rendered in rich, layered greens applied in flat zones that reject atmospheric naturalism in favor of decorative intensity. The bold silhouetting of leaves against lighter backgrounds creates the characteristic synthetist play of positive and negative shape that Gauguin had developed since his Brittany years with Bernard and the Nabis circle.