Haymaking near Dieppe

Paul Gauguin's 'Haymaking near Dieppe' (1885) belongs to his Impressionist period, shortly before his decisive turn toward Synthetism. Dieppe, on the Norman coast, was a place he visited and painted, and the haymaking subject connects to his broader interest in French rural labor — a subject he shared with Millet and Pissarro but approached with increasing formal ambition. By 1885 Gauguin was beginning to find Impressionist technique insufficient for what he wanted to express, and this haymaking scene may show the first signs of the structural clarification that would define his later work.

Gauguin's handling in the Dieppe haymaking scene shows Impressionist influence in the varied brushwork and attention to outdoor light, but his compositional instincts are already more deliberate than those of his Impressionist contemporaries. Figures in the field are given more structural weight than Monet or Sisley would typically provide. His palette is warmer and more saturated than classic Impressionist work.